Queen of Mirrors, Queen of Arrows
by brenli
Summary: [[Snow White AU]] This is a story about a Lady of Heaven, but it is also a story about a Lady of Assiah, and how their fates twisted together like thorny roses upon a silver trellis, with a kingdom at their wrath and mercy...
1. Once Upon a Time

_Foreword: The following is a fairytale, Snow White AU piece. Another ambitious project formed over the years... if I'm honest, I wish I could publish this as it's meant to look. Believe me when I say it has that 1700s storybook feel to it, fancy fonts and all. It's an amalgamation, however, of a number of different takes on the Snow White tale – from the brothers Grimm to Disney to Once Upon a Time to Snow White and the Huntsman and beyond._

 _While this has its roots as an Angel Sanctuary gone Snow White, Grimm-era fairytale AU, this piece (and the AU as a whole) features Nemaelle Mudou, OC for my Chronicles of the Fallen series. It also features Azreal, OC for Coming of the Seraph, a series written by HaloRecoil, and Zephyrel, OC for Eve of the Earth, a series written by Jael Randell (who long-time members of the readership likely know as the cowriter for CotF's second installment, Layers)._

* * *

 **Queen of Mirrors,** **Queen of Arrows  
** _The Tale of Our Lady_ _Princess of the Snow, Nemaelle  
_ _And the Reclamation of_ _Our Kingdom of Assiah  
_ By: Brenli

Once upon a time, there lived a great sorceress in the borderlands between the great kingdoms of Heaven and Assiah. None knew her name, nor her face, but all knew her mask – beautiful, smooth and white, in contrast to the twisted, pale dreadlocked hair that tumbled from the back of her head. The people of both kingdoms could not be sure if that sorceress, though full of grace, was an Angel or a Demon – for though it was said she could be of great service, it was also said that she could visit curses upon the very people she offered her mercy toward.

Most people did not seek her out, for none wanted to risk a curse in return for a favor... Except for one girl. A young lady of common blood, hair blue as sorrow, she bemoaned a love that would not and could not be realized in light of his nobility. Threadbare and dirty linens for dresses, and not enough water to rid the filth from her skin and hair, left her invisible to her love, though she once touched his hand when he came to offer alms to the poor. So she went out into the borderlands, looking for the sorceress with a mask neither cruel nor kind. She would have her love, or she would die trying.

The sorceress came upon her when her feet had become blistered in her travels, and healed her as the girl with the sorrow-blue hair wept of her love and begged, "Please, make me beautiful. Make me the most beautiful in all the land. Let him see me, love me, and marry me...!"

So the sorceress prepared a potion with which to enchant the girl, and had her prick her finger, dropping three fresh red drops of blood into the milky elixir. "By fairest blood it is done. Drink, but be warned...! By fairest blood this spell can be undone."

The girl drank deeply of the potion, not caring for the sorceress' warning – so deep and desperate was her love for the man. The sorceress disappeared in a wisp of autumn air, and at first the girl thought she had been tricked, for she felt no different. Looked no different... and yet, when she returned home, she found that men looked her way, smiled, tipped their hats to her and bid her good day. And when it came time to receive alms from the generous nobles, and she touched that black velvet glove a second time, he held on. A month later, a ripple of excitement echoed across the kingdom when a most shocking event occurred – a noble married a common girl, and Azreal, with her hair blue as night sky, eyes like stars, became a Princess of Heaven.

And while this is her story, this is also the story of one other.

For a few years later, in the borderlands between Heaven and Assiah, in the thick of winter, a royal carriage carried a King and a Queen toward their royal palace. The Queen was heavy with child, due to bring their first into the world. The King teased her for the embroidery she had just finished in their travels – a red rose, three blood drops spilling from one of the seven thorns – but she only smiled and said that she must remember how she'd pricked her finger on a rose a week before, how the blood upon fresh morning snow had made her ache for a child who looked just so – snow white, blood red. She hoped that roses would bloom readily on pale cheeks. She hoped that their child would be strong as thorns but gentle as flower petals... If the Queen had meant to say more, it was lost to screams, as the carriage slipped on ice and snow, suddenly toppling down a steep slope into the woods. So horrible was the accident that their driver had broken his neck in the fall, the carriage was crushed and useless, and the Queen, jostled too violently, went into labor. The King knew nothing of how to bring a child from a woman's body and into the world, but brave and desperate, he did the best that he could. A daughter was born on that day, and she was all the Queen had wished for. Skin white as snow, eyes red as blood and rose petals. Her cheeks were crimson from crying and from the cold, and she was beautiful. The King bade his beloved wife to look upon their Princess, only to find that his Queen had passed away.

Heart heavy from mourning, the King wept until the tears froze upon his face, but pressed on into the white chill of winter with nothing but his royal sword to protect him and his poor daughter, and the embroidery his wife had finished only moments before the carriage slipped. They were far from the palace, and the King could only hope that he would make it home before the forest would claim their souls... and then the sorceress appeared in a swirl of snowflakes and biting winter wind. If the King had been alone, he would have gone on his way without asking for her aid, but the child in his arms had grown quiet and purple with the cold. He begged the sorceress, "Please, take my daughter and I home! I am Setsuna, King of Assiah, and my people need me!"

But the sorceress only shook her masked head. "You ask me to come too close to the people. I cannot leave the borderlands."

"Then help me to keep my daughter warm, and give me a bow to protect her from harm! My sword is only useful when danger is near me. I do not want any threat to come too close to my Princess!" He had cried, and the sorceress gave him a long fur coat, a sling to bind his child to him from within the welcome warmth of the fur... and a peculiar, enchanted bow of crystal, with seven crystal arrows to match.

"There is no need to gather your arrows, for after the seventh has struck, they shall return to you. But be warned...! For while arrows reach long they may still kiss fairest flesh." The sorceress disappeared just as she had come, in a flurry of snow and wind, leaving the King to return home with his little daughter, safe and sound.

During Queen Sara's pregnancy, she had consulted with many men who studied the science of fortune, men who charted out auspicious days of birth and gave her ideas for names. At the end, it had been decided – Nemamiah for a son, after the Angel of Just Causes, the Angel who would protect and fight for those who could not do so for themselves, and a feminine derivative for a daughter... Nemaelle, taking the strength of the name and tempering it with gentleness. The King honored his wife's wishes and bestowed the strong as thorns, gentle as rose petals name upon the child, but he and all of court preferred to call her Snow... the Princess white as the winter she had been born in.

This is a story about a Lady of Heaven, yes, but it is also a story about a Lady of Assiah, and how their fates twisted together like thorny roses upon a silver trellis, with a kingdom at their wrath and mercy...


	2. Innocence in Full Bloom

**Queen of Mirrors, Queen of Arrows  
** _Innocence in Full Bloom  
_ By: Brenli

"Snow, come on! I'll hit it with a rock!"

"But you'll bruise it, then!"

"Snow...!" The young boy's frown was deep as he watched the girl balance precariously on the branch, one pale arm reaching out to the fat, red apple. "Please...! You know how much trouble I got in last time!"

"Well, if you run away, nobody will know you were here to watch me..." Nemaelle's little pink tongue poked out from between her rosy lips in concentration.

"But what if you get hurt?" The boy continued to fret, and fell into begging when he heard the Princess' handmaiden calling out for her. "Snow, get down! Moonlil's coming!"

But she was oh so close to her prize...! Hearing her handmaiden's calls only made the young girl all the more urgent, leaning forward dangerously, one hand reaching while the other held onto mere twigs and leaves... And just as she plucked the apple from the tree, the twigs slipped her hold. Three screams rang out – the boy's, the maid's, her own – but before Nemaelle could hit the ground, she was caught in her maid's arms.

"Your Highness, are you all right?" Moonlil's voice quivered in her worry, but the Princess only smiled, adrenaline making her cheeks pink as she cradled her apple in her pale hands. Moonlil's dark eyes turned up to find the boy already halfway across the little yard, running for the rose garden. "Jinho, you get back here at once!"

"Bye, oppa!" Nemaelle called out to her friend as he turned and disappeared behind red roses.

"The King will hear about this, young man!" She yelled after the boy, huffing as she let the Princess slip out of her arms.

"Don't be mad at oppa, Lil. He was trying to stop me."

"Then why didn't you listen to him?" Moonlil sighed, already knowing the answer.

Sure enough, Nemaelle only held up her prized apple with pride. "It's the biggest one on the tree!"

"You and your apples...! Your father has so many of them picked just for you, yet you scurry around in the trees like a squirrel for another one!"

"But those are inside. I'm outside."

"You silly girl..." Moonlil sighed but took the apple from her little hands, cleaning it on her apron as she gently swatted the back of Nemaelle's dress. "Come, come. Your father wants to see you."

The Princess scurried alongside her handmaiden as they entered the palace and ascended stone steps, Nemaelle skipping every other one, and moving all the more quickly when she heard the King conversing with a few of his Privy Councilmembers.

"It's so early to think of this... She's not even a maiden, yet."

The Lord Chancellor was sympathetic, at least, laying a hand on King Setsuna's shoulder. "I understand, My Lord. But the nature of this betrothal would not be instantaneous. The marriage would be arranged several years hence... perhaps when she is fourteen."

"Fourteen...!" Setsuna groaned.

From further back in the room, the King's Chief Huntsman smiled and chuckled. "Is it so hard to fathom, Your Grace? You were sixteen when you were wed to Queen Sara." Instantly every man in the room made the sign of the cross, as the Huntsman continued, "God rest her soul..."

After a moment of shut eyes, Setsuna murmured, "I can't picture my daughter any older than she is now, Jinsang. She's my little Snowdrop in the winter..." He looked up at the Lord Chancellor from his velvet-lined, gilded-golden seat and asked, "Kira, you're sure there is no way to put off this negotiation?"

"I would highly suggest considering the proposal now, My Lord. Proposals like these shouldn't go grow cold, or they may be lost, forever. And we could use the alliance... The Kingdom of Heaven is old and vast and rich. We certainly have nothing to lose."

"And what do they gain...?" Setsuna may have been heartfelt and a rather clingy father, but he knew enough of politics to know these arrangements were no mere act of charity. King YHWH wanted something in return...

Jinsang spoke up once more, leaning against the wall covered in golden damasked silk. "They gain a daughter, My Lord... Forgive me for being too bold, but the King of Heaven is without a Queen and is beginning to succumb to some kind of illness... the hunters serving his court say it is leprosy. And his elder son has gone missing and is presumed dead; his wife leaving no children, and she has been cast from court due to her common blood. This leaves only his younger son, My Lord. This is the only chance for him to continue his family line... and his son is the same age as your daughter."

Kira nodded and added on, "We stand to have a similar benefit in this arrangement. As there is no Queen of Assiah..."

"Yes, I see." But Setsuna was quick to wave him off. Though seven years had passed since that tragic day in the borderlands, he hadn't been able to entertain the idea of taking another wife. Sara took up every corner of his heart, even after death – there was simply no room for another. But the thought of giving his daughter away so young... even if a marriage wouldn't happen for several years, yet... "If I were to look for a new Queen...?"

"Is that what you would rather do, My Lord?"

Already Setsuna felt like he had betrayed Sara by even asking such a thing. "I don't know..." A cough disrupted his tense conversation, and he looked up to see Moonlil.

"Your Majesty, here is the Princess Nemaelle, as you requested." His little daughter's white hand fisted into Moonlil's wide, dark skirt, swinging it from side to side as she smiled.

He broke into a smile of his own, his troubles melting away like snow under the warmth of spring. "Snow...! My little Snowdrop, come here!"

Nemaelle took the cleaned apple from Moonlil's hand and ran over to her father, immediately climbing into his lap with a laugh like soft little bells. "It's not oppa's fault, okay?"

A light brown brow arched in the King's face. "Jinho? What happened now?"

"I was in the apple tree again. It's not his fault, okay?" Eyes red and wide as roses in full bloom sought out Jinsang, and she pleaded while clutching the apple, "He said to stop, but this was the best apple...!"

Setsuna looked at Moonlil to find her nodding, albeit with a smile, and he found himself smiling, too. "That's all right, Snow. Thank you for being honest." As his daughter smiled and cradled the apple against her cheek, he asked, "Have you done your daily prayers? Read your prayer book?"

She nodded and asked, innocent and curious, "Father, why does God give us wings when we die?"

The room grew quiet, as did Setsuna's voice, the world closing in on only a father and his daughter. "Is that what your prayer book has told you?" He lovingly tugged on her ear as she nodded again, "Well, if I had to guess, I would say that God gives us wings so that we can fly out from Paradise and watch over our loved ones."

Nemaelle's mouth disappeared behind the apple. "Is Mother watching over us?"

"Of course," Setsuna's heart ached, for himself, for his poor daughter. "She loves us, after all."

"Like we love her." Her eyes smiled above the apple.

His heart bled from within him... he couldn't do it. He couldn't take another wife, even if the Kingdom needed a Queen, even if he sometimes felt that Nemaelle needed a mother. No one would be a mother to Nemaelle like Sara would have been, if she'd been granted the chance... "Just like we love her." Worried brown eyes looked over at his Lord Chancellor. "Snow, there is talk about you being betrothed."

Nemaelle's mouth had opened to take a bite of the shining, red fruit, but she froze. Her young head tilted. "... What is that?"

"It is a promise for marriage, Princess," Kira offered with a smile. "Like in the fairytales."

"That's silly!" She laughed and cradled the apple against her chin. "I'm not a maiden!"

Minds briefly scrambled over the girl's innocence, and Jinsang offered. "It is not marriage quite so soon, Your Highness. The boy would be a friend for some time. Not a husband."

"Like oppa?"

Minds scrambled again. "Not... quite."

The Princess' snowy brows knit together in confusion.

"But he would be a friend, Snowdrop." Setsuna ran his fingers through Nemaelle's soft white hair as she finally bit into the apple with a pleased giggle. "Would you like to have a new friend? Another friend to spend time with?"

Nemaelle chewed thoughtfully, the apple covering her mouth as she clutched it in her pale hands. "... Would he climb trees with me?"

"Perhaps; I hear the little Prince is quite rambunctious!" Jinsang's laughter whittled itself down into a tiny cough. That fact probably didn't help King YHWH's proposal.

But Nemaelle was instantly interested, her little feet wiggling over the prospect of a playmate in the trees with her, one slipper falling to the floor. "Who is he?"

Several pairs of eyes all looked at each other as the Princess merrily ate her apple, and Kira pressed onward with the attempt to negotiate the betrothal. "He is Prince Mi-"

"My Lord!" Moonlil promptly moved aside for the guard who had bellowed and burst into the room. "A disturbance is coming in from the borderlands!"

Frustration wrinkled the King's brow. "A skirmish?"

"We're not sure, My Lord. It's much larger than a skirmish. You will want to see this – bring the bow."

Bring the bow... The three words were enough to realize the seriousness of the situation, for King Setsuna never carried that crystal bow and its seven arrows unless circumstances were dire... "Please stand, Snow; I have to leave."

The little girl hopped off of his lap, but asked Kira once more, "Who is he?"

She was ignored in the face of a threat that the guard had trouble describing. Men like shattered mirror...? "We must wear full armor, in case they cut us! Kira, have the armor prepared immediately!"

"Wait...!" Nemaelle's face was a pout half-shielded behind her apple.

"Yes, My Lord!"

"Jinsang, have the horses fetched and made ready!"

"But...!" She tried again.

"Yes, My Lord!"

"Snow..."

"Father, who is he?" Nemaelle asked while he kissed her forehead.

"You are so pure-hearted... You don't understand what we're asking of you." Setsuna sighed. "We will talk of this again, soon."

"Father...!" But he was gone along with his Privy Council, all of them preparing to defend their country against... something. Some force never before heard of...

Her handmaiden caught her before she could run out the door with one bare foot, the apple tumbling to the floor in her urgency. "Don't you worry, Princess...!" Moonlil comforted the confused child while slipping the fallen shoe onto Nemaelle's little white foot. "Someday your Prince will come, hmm? Someday you'll meet."

But the promise was not enough for the girl. "But who is he?"


	3. Innocence Threatened

**Queen of Mirrors, Queen of Arrows  
** _Innocence Threatened  
_ By: Brenli

As the little Princess lay on her belly upon her bed, surrounded by sheer white bed drapes, the soothing little tinkling notes from her prized music box filled the room. Moonlil's attempt to comfort her had reminded her of the song it played... Her pale fist held up her pale head, and her free hand reached out to gently pull open a slit she'd made in the white velvet interior. She pulled out a locket, opening it to smile at the miniatures of her parents. They were 16 in the little pictures, painted on the day of their coronation. Apparently her father was not as worrisome as he had become. He seemed happy, his smile a little more proud than her mother's gentle one. The music box had been one of several wedding gifts, from her mother to her father... but at the time the velvet lining had been black. Her father had it changed to white before passing it down to her...

Nemaelle's snowy little nose wrinkled as she wondered if her parents had been... betrowed. That was the word, right? Betrowed? Her feet kicked up and swayed to the rhythm of her bejeweled music box. She still wasn't sure what betrowed meant. Kira said it was like fairytale marriage, but her father asked her if she wanted a friend. Jinho's father had said that the boy might climb trees with her, though...! She was looking forward to that part! Whoever he was. She still didn't know. But she would sure ask, once her father got back!

Men's voices rose over the sudden whinnying of horses. Nemaelle knew those sounds well, and excitement made roses bloom brightly on her cheeks as she stuffed the locket back into its secret compartment, pressing the white velvet back under the golden lip of the music box and shutting it, leaving it on her messy bedsheets as she scrambled over to her window. Peeking over the sill, the first thing she noticed was that her father had returned with more men than when he'd left...? The Lord Chancellor seemed to have taken the rear to some other man... dark hair, pretty eyes...! Like light shining through aqua ocean water. And though he was dirty like the knights were after much jousting, he seemed happy, chatting up the King. Kira looked rather worried and sad, though, poor man...! She'd be sure to give him a hug and share an apple with him. Setsuna seemed very happy... but the joy she wanted to feel sank into a lump in her stomach when she saw the woman.

The woman was very, very pretty...! Eyes like stars and hair blue like... blue like... the sky at night? Deep ocean? Like the satin of one of her father's doublets. Her beauty wasn't what bothered the snowy Princess... it was the way the King held her as he carried her on his horse, arms nearly wrapped all the way around her slim waist as one of her hands held onto the horse's reins... The other one rested on her father's cheek in a way that reminded her of painted portraits of people in love.

It felt wrong.

Moonlil had sent her off to bed, and that meant staying in bed, but Nemaelle needed to make sense of what she saw. Had Setsuna wanted to have a new wife? He never said that he did. Not to her, anyway...! So she ran, bare feet padding down the stairs, little hands holding up the soft white nightgown so that she wouldn't trip on it, calling for her father the entire way.

"What are you doing out of bed, Snow?" The King asked when she met them in the welcoming hall, cheeks red from her running.

"Who is she?" Nemaelle asked, the worry spilling from her rosy lips.

"Snow! How rude!" Setsuna suddenly snapped at her, causing the girl to recoil. "Be kind and address your Queen-to-be...!"

Nemaelle curtsied, though she couldn't keep the hurt little quiver from her lips. "Your Majesty...?" She looked up, and her father's face was... stern. Very stern. He never looked at her that way...

"Now, My Lord... it's all right." To the woman's credit, her voice was nice and smooth. Chilly. But smooth. She knelt in black satin that had been dirtied from whatever... skirmish Nemaelle briefly heard about. "So your father calls you Snow, hmm...? You may call me Azreal." Her hands were cold from the night air, tilting up the girl's face. "You're very beautiful, child...!"

"Is that all you have for your new mother? A frown?" The King scolded his upset little daughter.

"Ah, you mustn't blame the girl, Your Highness. She is young. She will learn." The man with the aqua eyes laughed, but it was a stiff laugh, a laugh that hinted at cruelty, which caused the Princess to step away when he knelt beside Azreal. "I look forward to becoming your uncle, sweet girl. The King says you like apples...?" The man pulled one from a bag that he carried, giving it to her.

"She is meant to be in bed, Ezekiel; don't give that to her." Never before had Nemaelle heard Setsuna grumble in such a way. He seemed tired of her...

"There is no harm in a bedtime snack, is there?" He pressed the apple into her hands and whispered, "Sometimes it's okay to be a bit selfish." One aqua eye winked at her, but the friendliness felt as false as her father did.

Nemaelle held the apple over her mouth, but didn't bite into it. She had no appetite. Her stomach worked itself into confused and betrayed knots, and her eyes were wide and worried... There was no more feeling about this; now the Princess knew for sure.

It was wrong.

"Come. We should wash up, eat, and rest," Setsuna insisted, "For we have a big day, tomorrow...! Planning and performing a wedding in a single day will be a feat no kingdom has ever seen, before!"

"Father!" The child cried out, her feet pattering across the floor after him.

"Lord Chancellor, please take my daughter back to her bed."

"Father, please!"

"Yes, My Lord." Kira replied with a frown, but scooped up Nemaelle by her waist.

"Why does God give us wings when we die, Father? Why?" She struggled against the Chancellor's hold on her. But that much seemed to stop King Setsuna, however briefly. "So we can fly out and watch ours! You said!"

The King's frown softened into sadness, but hardened the very moment Azreal touched his hand. "Take her away, Kira."

But Nemaelle screamed as the Lord Chancellor carried her off, Ezekiel sharing some icy glance with his sister. "Mother is watching you, Father! Mother is watching you!"

What else could Kira do but cradle the wailing Princess as he brought her back up the stairs, back into her warm bed? At some point the girl had thrown the apple that the Queen-to-be's brother had given her; he heard it smash against a wall and go tumbling down the steps. "I'm so sorry, Princess..." The apology was strained with sadness as he tucked the weeping girl in.

"This is wrong..."

Kira's mouth thinned into a line. "It is sudden. But the King will have what he wishes... I'm sorry, Your Highness."

Nemaelle shook her head, and the Lord Chancellor attempted to comfort her by brushing her snowy hair back. "But he doesn't even know her!"

He wanted to agree with the girl. Setsuna had laid eyes on the woman for a mere moment after saving her from some strange mirror-man – and they had yet to understand what those men even were – and suddenly he had it in mind to take her for his wife. And Kings would have what they desired, but... before they'd left to take care of this unexplained threat, Setsuna had been unsure as ever about finding a new Queen. Something was wrong... But he could not tell Nemaelle that. "I know, Princess, I know... But... the King needs a Queen."

"No, he doesn't! We've been fine without one, haven't we?"

It was not a conversation Kira wanted to have with a child so young, so fair, so innocent... "I am afraid... that your father must ensure that... your family continues. For the security of your Kingdom." What a horrid thing to tell the girl...!

And yet, in a moment of pure-hearted desire, Nemaelle seemed to add on years to her meager seven. "If I get married can he not get married?"

"Snow..." Kira's heart broke in two.

"You said, right? Betrowed? I can be betrowed! I don't mind! Jinsang said the boy would climb trees with me...! I want to be betrowed! I think it sounds fun, anyway!"

But there was so much more to betrothal than play dates in trees. A promise for things she simply wasn't aware of... "Snow, I wish that could be enough... and if you approve of the betrothal, after we've had the chance to tell you everything it means, then absolutely. We can go ahead with the negotiations for your dowry. But it won't change your father's heart. He wants this for himself..."

Her sobbing had made her nose bright red, rose red. "No he doesn't. Something's wrong...!"

Her intuition matched his own, and he wanted to agree, to let her know that she had someone on her side in the face of this strange development... but all he could do was cradle the girl until her tears gave way to sleep, winding up her music box and letting it play in her ear in the hope of soothing her.

All he could do was whatever the King bade him do, and that meant overseeing the fastest wedding ever heard of, in all the land. Kira thought his head would split in two – partly for how chaotic pulling the entire celebration together had become...

Partly for the fact that it largely meant using pieces from Setsuna's wedding to Sara.

The decorations, Kira could forgive. That was the price to pay for arranging a wedding in a single day. The same choices in music had ruffled the Lord Chancellor's feathers... Surely the King would have liked to keep some of those songs between himself and his beloved first wife. He put up what could have been considered a fight... Someone had to. No one else was there to defend the late Queen's honor.

And then the King bade the Lady Azreal wear Sara's coronation gown for the ceremony. Kira had no heart left to argue after that; it had been crushed under Setsuna's sudden thoughtlessness. That wasn't the man he knew, the Prince he'd grown up alongside, the lovelorn boy who feared that the woman he had been arranged to marry would not return his passion. If the Chancellor could, he would have liked to cry witchcraft at all this...

But all he could do was give Princess Nemaelle a sad-eyed look as she stood before her father's new bride.

"You look wonderful, Snow... just like a little snowdrop." The Lady Azreal said in that chilly-smooth tone.

"Thank you." The seven-year-old sounded much older than she actually was.

"Snow... look at me." When her silver-star eyes caught and held the child's rose-red ones, she continued, "You're upset..."

"You're wearing my mother's dress." Nemaelle's voice held the chilly bite of hard-packed snow.

Dainty, creamy shoulders slumped with an elegant sigh. "So I am... as your father asked of me."

"No one's supposed to wear it but her..."

"Oh no... Don't cry, sweet girl, don't cry..." Arranging the white skirt, accented in cloth of gold and little golden beads, Azreal knelt before the Princess and took her snowy hands in her own. "I am not trying to replace your mother. From what I hear, she was a gentle woman. I don't wish to replace that." She delicately squeezed Nemaelle's soft palms. "You believe me, don't you?"

The Princess was honest. Oh, she was always honest... "No... I'm sorry. I don't believe you." And for a moment she could have sworn that Azreal's hands grew hard around her own, as if the woman would have trapped her, if she could.

"Perhaps that is fair." With a snap of her fingers, a serving girl stepped forward with a platter full of fruit, and Azreal picked an apple to present to Nemaelle. It went ignored, and Azreal put it back on the tray. "One day you will understand the world we live in. You are too innocent to realize what I mean when I say that we are but women... but one day. One day you will understand. And I wonder what you will do, then." She watched the child try to pick apart all that she'd said, but pressed on before Nemaelle could reply. "Your father tells me that you once met the sorceress in the borderlands. Is that true?"

Red eyes blinked so fast that the snowy lashes fluttered in the Princess' pale face. "It was when I was born... I don't remember it at all."

Azreal squeezed her hands once more and leaned forward, silver eyes sparkling like stars holding secrets. "I once met her, too."

"You did...?"

She nodded after her veil had been pinned into her night sky hair. "So it pains me that you feel so hurt by me being here... I can never replace your mother. Nor do I want to. But you and I... we are connected by the sorceress. I feel it in my heart... and in yours. I hope that in time, you will feel our bond, too."

Nemaelle saw the smile curl upon Azreal's painted lips, a graceful, delicate curve that didn't quite reach her silver eyes... to be fair, Nemaelle knew that her smile didn't come close to her own eyes, either. That it struggled to stay on her face, at all...

"Your Majesty... Your Highness." The Lord Chancellor called to each of them, arms neatly folded behind his back, face solemn. "It is time to begin the bridal procession."

If the Lady Azreal thought the air about them spoke more of funerals than weddings, she didn't say so, standing and waiting for the Princess to hurry behind her and take hold of the long train. Her brother took her hand, and they shared another quick, icy glance as the choir began their hymns of holy matrimony. Ezekiel offered an aqua blue wink, and he asked, "Are you nervous, dear sister?"

"Perhaps." She offered evenly.

"Don't be... You've got this."


	4. Innocence Lost

**Queen of Mirrors, Queen of Arrows  
** _Innocence Lost  
_ By: Brenli

King Setsuna had pushed the ceremony along with such speed that everyone's heads spun from it... One moment vows, the next crowns, a cup of wine, and they were gone. The King had even made some joke about eagerness...

No one laughed.

"It's strange..." He murmured between kisses on her collarbone, fingers pulling on the lacing of the bodice of Sara's coronation gown, worn over Queen Azreal's body. He hadn't allowed the handmaidens to help either of them undress.

"What is, My Lord?" Her voice was placid as still water in a lake, patient with his hands upon her skin.

Setsuna paused in the kisses to lightly pant out, "My need for you... I haven't felt this kind of need in so long... Not since-"

"Ah, then you must be aching fiercely...!" He was still fully-dressed, and the gown only fell from the upper half of her body, but she pushed him, making him fall back onto their marital bed.

A laugh escaped him, loud and bewildered. "Azreal, you will be the death of me...!"

Smiles seemed to come rarely to the woman with hair blue like sorrow, but one turned up the outer corners of her scarlet lips. "Indeed, My Lord..." She climbed upon the bed, sleek as a cat, her thighs parting over his. Azreal's hands passed along his chest, still adorned in the golden doublet. "Funny... you seem so different from him..."

"From who?" Setsuna asked with shut eyes, reveling in the feel of her hands traveling up his torso.

"Another man, My Lord... a man who would be King. But you see, My Lord..." Her fingers rested at his throat, "I am as smart as I am beautiful... and I don't fall for lies, anymore."

His eyes opened, confusion wrinkling his brow, giving way to wide-eyed shock when her fingers quickly fanned across his neck and gripped tight.

"You are all the same in the end. Easily bored. Roaming eyes. A new girl at court. Women are made to give everything to their men and they get nothing in return except for empty, aching hearts!" Gone was the chilly smooth voice, replaced with sharpness, like the placid lake had shattered into shards of mirror. "You would eventually do the same, My Lord; already my hold on you wavers...! Or is that you just fighting for air?" One hand released his neck, even as his hands clawed at her own. His strength would never match hers. She had the power of ten men, easily, and so much more...!

Setsuna coughed and sputtered and gave out a strangled cry, staring at the glinting ceremonial dagger she took from his own hip and held high above him.

"I beat you before you could beat me, My Lord. Thank you for the kingdom... I had need of a new one." The dagger descended, rose-red blood issuing forth from seven deep wounds, bubbling out of Setsuna's groaning lips. As life slipped away from the King, a shudder ran through the Queen's body, her silver eyes briefly lightning-white as she took that life into herself. Oh yes... she had been overdue for killing someone. Her bones felt lighter, already, and the relief made her purr. "Mmm... thank you, My Lord. That was nice."

"F-Father...!"

Azreal left the dagger lodged into the King's chest as she looked at the snowy-haired Princess standing in the doorway, a small platter with cake in her hand. "Sweet child, is that a reconciliation present?" She watched the cake fall to the floor with a splat that reminded her of squishing flesh. "Oh, now look what you've done, you messy girl!"

Nemaelle's shock finally gave way to desperate action, her white dress fanning out behind her as she ran and screamed, "Kira...! _Kiraaa!_ "

But her urgency didn't faze the new Queen. A quiet, patronizing little chuckle filled the room, giving way to a laughter louder, more sinister, cutting into the air like the mirror shards that began to pour in through every window. Stealing the cracked, colored glass, mirror-shard ravens tainted them and turned them dark, assimilating them into an army of mirror-men.

The Princess' panic hadn't bothered Azreal because she knew there would be no chance for those ridiculous people who loved their ridiculous, dead King. There was no time for the donning of armor. Nearly all the women had been cut to pieces... some of the men were lucky enough to grab hold onto a shield. The Lord Chancellor was one of those lucky few, crashing his way through the monstrous mirrors to Setsuna's armory. He needed the bow. He wasn't sure how much good it would do, but he needed that bow...!

Warfare had not prepared Kira for the likes of that level of gore. Shreds of flesh and muscle and bone... blood was a horrible combination with stone; he had slipped twice on puddles of deep red, fallen hard against the door into the King's armory before he burst inside and shut himself in, locking the door. "... Moonlil!"

The maid's skin was torn to ribbons and hanging loosely from her body. Her hand planted against the standing wooden chest in some last-ditch effort to protect its contents... it slipped, leaving a horrid arc of blood on the double doors as it fell against the ground and grew still.

Kira's mouth held a quivering frown, silently mourning the little maid who had looked after the Princess so well, trying to give the girl someone akin to a mother. She did not deserve that kind of death... He heard sniveling from within the chest, and instantly knew that Moonlil had been trying to save more than just the bow. So much more than just the bow...

"Kira...!" Nemaelle wailed as soon as the doors parted, and she dived into his arms. "Father is...!"

"Shh, shh. Right now we need to focus on getting you out of here. Do you understand, Snow? I'm going to keep you safe!" He reached out, immediately pulled the quiver over his shoulder, took the crystal bow into his hand. He grabbed a dagger Setsuna had often used when hunting and held it out to the little girl, watching her recoil from the blade. "If I have my way you won't need to use this, Princess, but if you must, don't hesitate. You strike sure and strong!" The girl wept as he put the dagger in her hands, and Kira knew that they were losing their Princess on that day, even if she lived. She would never be the same... He pulled her tight against his chest, partly for safety, partly because he wanted to hug the innocent girl just one more time before she was lost to the gore all over the palace floors and walls. "Hold on tight, Snow. Hold on with all of your strength!"

She held on so tight that her little nails were making gouges in his skin, through his blood-soaked doublet, but he took them for signs that she was still with him as he threw open the door and pressed into the deadly sharp fray. The mirror shards had been waiting, as if seeking them out on purpose. Kira could hear the scratches they made upon his metal shield. God, he needed to make it outside. At least outside. Surely there would be someone out there who could take her if those mirror-men were to swallow him up from behind...

So close...! He could see the nearest exit from the palace and ran for it, feet slipping on blood. Glass bit and sliced into his back. He had to pull out his ceremonial sword and swing it wide to parry a wave of mirror shards and finally sprint into the yard. Now the gate. If he could just get her to the gate...!

The huntsmen were all there, no doubt hearing the trumpets calling out for help before those men were cut down. They saw less of war but knew enough of killing... though Kira knew that knowledge meant little in the face of those enchanted monsters. He saw the Chief Huntsman swinging a broadsword through a misshapen wave of glass, briefly splitting it just enough for him to pass through. "Jinsang!" Kira stumbled and ran toward him, dropping his shield just enough for Jinsang to see the top of the Princess' snow-white head. By the time Kira reached him, he dropped to his knees. Those shards of mirror had managed to cut him deep, low on his back... and he realized he might not make it.

"What is this witchcraft?" Jinsang yelled in bewilderment, immediately trying to help the other man to his feet.

"That blue-haired bitch has murdered the King!" He hissed, holding out the bow. "Keep this safe. Take Snow to your home and keep her hidden there!"

The Chief Huntsman's dark brows arched together as he slipped the quiver over his back and took the crystal bow. "I'll be back soon to take care of this!"

"No, you stay with her-" Such a horrible irony that in the midst of arguing over how best to protect the Princess, she was stolen from them, a crowd of mirror-men descending upon the group and ripping the child from Kira's arms, leaving him with gashes.

The men cried out for the girl as she wailed for them, her pale body swallowed up in dark glass, and for a long and dreaded moment all they could do was fight mirror-men while a glass cloud carried Nemaelle away. From between his shield and his sword he could see the girl trying hard to cut her way out with the dagger he'd given her, stabbing and sweeping at the air. Finally one white arm reached out, and she screamed, "Oppa!"

Jinsang was dismayed to see his foolish son running after the glass cloud, reaching for her. "Jinho, no!"

The distraction was enough to get the better of the men, feeling the terrible bite of mirror shards cutting deeper and deeper still. How were they going to live through those wounds? Against the odds, the boy managed to grab onto Nemaelle's hand, and so Jinsang clung onto him, hoping to pull the Princess back to safety...

No such luck. The glass cut hard at Jinho's little tan hands, and the pain made him let go, even as he cried out for his friend. When his body hit the ground, he looked at his father, covered in gouges so thick it seemed that chunks of his body had gone missing...

Jinsang held the crystal bow and the quiver of seven matching arrows to his son. "Bring these... home... Hide them..."

"A... appa, I'm sorry, I'm s-"

"No." His bloody hand rested on his son's cheek as he pressed the quiver and the bow against his son's chest. "You got... closer than us. I am so proud of you..." And then he pushed his son away from him. "Go...! Run...!"

Jinho obeyed his father with tears in his eyes, clutching the weapon with wounded hands as he ran past the gate. Jinsang stumbled and tried to follow Kira, who was already using his shield to push his way back into the palace. A suicide mission to try and save the Princess of Assiah, even as he bled out... But Jinsang's dark eyes kept turning back to his foolish, brave son. He had to make sure the shards wouldn't come after him... he had to make sure...

Kira heard the hard thud of the Chief Huntsman's body hitting the ground, and glanced back to see Jinsang wave his hand at him, just once. Pushing him forward. Urging him to continue... and then that hand fell and went still, just as Moonlil's had done.

There was something so horribly wrong about it... that a father – two fathers – should die, but somehow he was still living. The rage tore a hurting roar from the Lord Chancellor's bloody throat... He barely made it to the door before collapsing on top of his shield.

Glass pinched at his bloody skin and began to pull at his limp form, dragging him into the palace, through blood and flesh. The mirror-men were looking for bodies and gathering them into neat little piles... but that one. That one still had a heartbeat. What to do with that one...? The uncertainty showed in the way the shards that comprised them bristled, unhappy for something beyond the norm. Still alive, but their Queen had been content to end the flaying of the palace. So they continued dragging him through the muck and gore, deep in the center of the palace. Straight to the throne room, where Azreal stood in a different gown, one the mirror-men could appreciate more than the white and gold coronation dress – dark and satin and littered with black jewels that looked like shards of themselves, jutting up from her shoulders like a threat. And yet her face was calm, her voice placid again as Ezekiel knelt before the Princess of Assiah and dabbed blood away from a gash upon her soft, pale cheek.

"You wouldn't have been cut if you hadn't struggled so hard, sweet Snow." Azreal's hands neatly folded together in front of her. "That may leave a scar..."

"I don't care." She really, truly didn't care. Nemaelle felt her insides break apart, today... had lost her father and countless others... What was one scar in the face of having her life utterly dismantled?

The Queen knelt down and rested her hand upon the wound, and with a little sigh and lightning-white eyes, healed it, leaving no scar behind. "You should care. Your beauty is your biggest weapon, in this world... you must guard it."

"I don't want beauty if it makes me like you." Ezekiel had taken the dagger from her already, but her hand clenched as though she still held it. Tears, silent ones, traumatized and broken ones, tracked down her face, and she felt... old. So much older than she really was...

Azreal's brother merely laughed. "The mouth on this one...! Why don't you just take her life, now, dear sister? I think she might have a death wish!"

But the Queen merely shook her head. "No. She's too young for me to get the most from her. She's not even a maiden, yet..." Her nail traced alongside a tear trail, and she asked, "Are you sad for all the lives I've taken, child?"

Nemaelle's nostrils flared at the question. The answer should have been obvious, but Azreal asked it as though there might have been an alternative. "Yes..."

Azreal scoffed and roughly turned the girl's face away from her, standing to take her seat upon the throne.

"And for you."

Ezekiel sneered, and Azreal's head tilted thoughtfully. "Is that so?"

"It is so. It takes a lot of hate to kill innocent people. And I think it ate up everything else inside of you. No wonder you like your beauty so much. It's all you have left." Little white fists shook, and tears kept tumbling, but mature words kept spilling from her seven-year-old mouth. "And I think that's so sad... and I pity you."

Azreal's eyes had grown hard as silver arrow tips. "... Hmm." Her fingers drummed on the arms of the throne, golden and carved with rosettes all along it. "Innocent. Tell me, child – as you seem to think you have the wisdom of a woman so much older than you are. The fact that your father brought me home with the express intention of taking me for his wife... is that innocent? He had known me for all of two minutes before he got this idea into his head. He wanted to fuck me, child. Do you understand that word? He wanted to put his privy parts between my legs and do vulgar things, though he knew not the slightest thing about me. Perhaps your father is not so innocent as you thought."

"It was witchcraft!" Nemaelle's cheeks bloomed red in anger, in shock, in embarrassment for the dirty words Azreal had told her plainly. "I know my father better than you do!"

"I know _men_ better than you do!" In a swirl of dark satin and sharp dark shards, the Queen descended on the Princess, taking hold of her, gripping her. "But if you love your father so much, perhaps you should join him, hmm? Would you like that?" Nemaelle whimpered and shrank under her hold, rose-red eyes shutting tight. "No, of course you wouldn't." She released her so roughly that the girl stumbled back into Ezekiel's legs, and he steadied her by her shoulders.

"I'm telling you, dear sister. She has a death wish."

"Beauty can't fix the foolhardy, it seems." She dusted off her skirt. "What is this?" Her eyes turned to the mirror-men holding up Kira by his bleeding shoulders, letting him groan his way back to consciousness. "Oh, yes... This is Kira, isn't it, sweet girl? The man you were screaming for when we brought you in. Still alive...! Quite an accomplishment." She motioned for the mirror-men to bring him closer, and they dropped him at Azreal's feet.

Kira felt his face being cupped by the Queen's hands, and it jolted him back to alertness. The first thing he saw was the poor Princess... softly crying, and the Queen's brother had his arms wrapped around her shoulders. "I'm so sorry, Snow..."

Her lips pressed together in a defeated frown. "This isn't your fault..."

"How sweet, Lord Chancellor." Azreal's fingers caressed his face, the metal of her rings biting into his skin. "Strange, to see such a good heart paired with a face like this..."

Kira's dark brows furrowed together, but before he could begin to think of a reply, her brother pointed out with surprise, "Another one lives...? How strange!"

The Princess suddenly scrambled and cried out, "Oppa!"

He tried to look, but Azreal forced his face forward, nails leaving crescent moons impressed on his flesh. At least he had managed to see that the boy didn't have the bow... He could only hope that meant he'd hidden it before his capture.

"Ah, yes... your little friend." Kira watched as the Queen offered a chilly smile. "I see your hands are wounded..."

"I tried to save Snow from you." Jinho's voice was cracked and weeping.

"A silly waste of effort."

"Stop it..." The Chancellor's mouth grumbled between fingers that had begun tracing his lips. "Stop torturing the poor boy; you've killed his father today."

Azreal only shrugged her slim shoulders. "Fathers leave their children every day. It doesn't matter whether it was by death or not."

Her words had sent Jinho into a struggling rage, spluttering a handful of foreign words at the Queen. None of them sounded nice.

"You have such a lovely little face, sweet, angry boy." A light chuckle punctuated his struggling. "I'm sure your mother had some part in that."

"I look like my father, not my mother!"

"Ah, then your mother is not beautiful?"

The question took him off guard, and Kira watched Azreal's silver-star eyes... calculating. "Don't answer her, Jin-"

"Hush." The Queen slapped her hand over his mouth.

Jinho struggled and hissed in childish ire, "Umma is more beautiful than you!"

The malice was palpable... all three of them knew he'd made a grave mistake. "Is that so? I must have her brought to me, then."

Suddenly both children were weeping and begging a sad chant of "No...! No...!"

But the woman only laughed, and Kira fought against the mirror shards biting into his arms, restraining him. What was a little more blood loss compared to all he had spilled upon the floor, already? "Leave his mother alone; she's all he has left because of you!"

"Bring him back home and have his mother brought here. I'd like to decide who's more beautiful, myself."

"He's a _child!_ "

"He's a hunter's son. He'll find his own food."

Though the glass ripped at his flesh, though blood poured from him like flowing water, Kira tore himself from the mirror-men. "Heartless whore!" Adrenaline guided his hand to the sword at his hip, and he unsheathed it, leapt forward and drove it clean through the Queen's middle.

The sound of glass shards clanking against each other as they bristled grated on his ears, made them feel like they were about to bleed. But nearly every other part of him was already bleeding... He knew he would die, but God...! He would die killing the woman who had ruined the lives of those children! So shocked was she that his half-dead weight allowed them to crash into the throne, her body sinking into it as she gasped and stared up at him with wide silver eyes.

"I should have done this when we first found you..." The Lord Chancellor twisted the blade in her stomach.

But her hand gripped onto the metal... and slowly, delicately pulled it out of her body. "So like a man..." The sword left her flesh, and she suddenly tugged the hilt right out of his hand and tossed it aside. "To think that stabbing me with your sword will be enough to conquer me!"

One hand pressed against her wound, and her eyes went white as lightning again, taking Kira by his chin and pushing him away from her, standing, forcing him onto his knees. He knew... he knew it was over.

"This face... I once gave my heart to a face like this." Her hand left her stomach, repaired but blood-smeared, and clasped on firm to Kira's face. "He ruined it. Devoured it... You are right, Chancellor."

The cries of his name came through distant in his ears, but he turned his head... and gave the poor Princess a smile. A smile despite everything that had come undone...

But Azreal forced his face forward once again, her eyes burning into his as she plunged her hand right into his chest. Clear through the bone... taking hold of his heart and crushing it. "I _am_ heartless."

The children's screams were piercing as Kira's body fell to the ground, and Azreal sat on the throne with his bloody, fleshy heart in her hands. "Send the boy back to his home. Fetch his mother."

"And the Princess?" Ezekiel asked, his hold firm around the girl who flailed and cried and reached for the dead man.

The Queen's head tilted as she thought over it. "... Keep her. Lock her away in the tower until I have some use for her."

"Some use...?" Her brother's aqua eyes blinked. "It'll be several years until she's a maiden."

"That's fine. I'm sure we could set her to work cleaning the blood off the floors and her beauty would still keep. Lock her away for now. She's a little bit hysterical."

"Yes, dear sister."

The children only had each other, in the wake of that terror... but they were pulled apart, mirror-men taking the boy, Ezekiel taking the girl. They could feel the world growing dark and cold as it closed in on them, even as Jinho cried out, "Snow...!"

Even as Nemaelle wept, "Oppa...!"


	5. Like Day Swallows the Night

**Queen of Mirrors, Queen of Arrows**

 _Like Day Swallows the Night_

By: Brenli

Over the years, the snowy Princess developed a habit of whistling. Mirror-men stood at every door... wearing the skins and clothes of the court. Time had toughened the hides into something like leather, and the mirror shards scraped and grated and sometimes formed uncomfortable and unnatural lumps under their skin suits. She didn't look for too long. She preferred whistling and staring at her work, or at the floor-length gowns that Queen Azreal had her wear. They were usually white, silver, or some somber shade of gray... if she had to choose, then she would choose gray. But she didn't have the choice, not really. Azreal sent her the dresses and had a mirror-man in Moonlil's skin dress her.

On that day Azreal had chosen a shimmering silver that bordered on light gray, like morning dew on a bird's wing. A simple bodice that gave way to a floor-length skirt, fabric gradually being overcome by mirror shards until the bottom hem was nothing but jagged, dangerous pieces that glinted up at her with warning. Nemaelle stared at the little pieces, at the replicated reflections of her solemn face as she held up the shining platter and the pair of hearts it bore, boiled and then cut into tidy squares that the Queen picked at with a dainty, two-pronged fork.

"Help yourself to some, sweet Snow." Azreal said after swallowing, setting down the fork to continue washing more blood over her arm, along her calf. "... Snow? Did you hear me?"

The note that Nemaelle had been whistling stopped short in her throat, turning choked and high-pitched as a robin caught in mid-flight. "... Thank you, My Lady, for your generosity. But I'm not hungry."

The Queen stood in the bath, stretching blood-smeared arms over her head as the red clung to her... lightning-white eyes slipping shut. "It is quite generous of me, yet you refuse every time. We need to do something about your rudeness."

She was keen on doing that... dressing up cruel words with kind ones and the chilly-smooth tone. They always felt like threats... but threats were normal for Nemaelle, by that point. "I'm sorry, Your Majesty. I'll try to be better."

"Water."

Nemaelle set the platter with the bits of heart on the nearest table and set about washing warm water down Azreal's body, ridding her of the blood she regularly bathed in. Five people... it took five people per bath, and the Queen took two baths a day. At the start it had only been girls that she would slay... In later days she'd become open about gender, but always, always they were beautiful, maidens and young men. People in the prime of their life...

"How do you like the dress I've given you today, sweet Snow?"

"It's beautiful. Thank you." She flinched when Azreal tugged on the simple bodice, wearing an unsatisfied frown.

"It seems plain up top. I shall have more mirrors put on it."

"I like it as it is-" But of course, no sooner than Azreal had expressed a desire for alterations, mirrors seemed to grow straight out of the fabric all along the neckline, sharp and dangerous, the shards moving up to her throat. The dress would have cut her if she didn't hold her chin up higher...

A smile curled on Azreal's painted lips. "Better." She stepped from the jagged, mirrored tub, letting the Princess wash off each dainty foot with water before moving across the room to the glass doors. Fabric seemed to be pulled from the ether, rich purple satin and golden glass slivers all around her shoulders, the neckline dipping all the way to her navel, and the doors opened on command. Everything by her command... even Nemaelle's own dress. "Come, Snow."

She could command everything in the palace, but not the Princess herself... though she certainly tried. The mirror-men at the door strode up beside her, glass pieces making horrid sounds under the stolen skin, and it drove whistles out of Nemaelle's mouth.

"Snow."

"Yes, My Lady...!" Her fingers curled into the shimmery light gray skirt as she hurried up to the Queen, trying to ignore the mirror-men and how one of them had Kira's face.

"Why do you do that?"

Eyes red as roses blinked in uncertainty as she stood on the balcony with Azreal. "Do what?"

"Whistle. You're always whistling."

Her snowy lashes fell over her eyes, but her cheeks bloomed bright pink. "I... I guess I like to whistle while I work..." An incomplete truth.

"... Hmm." Suddenly the mirror-men behind them gave out a painful, grating screech, like dragging glass across metal, and the people milling about in the courtyard, going about their daily servitude to their Queen of seven years, stopped to look up at them, to kneel and... watch.

Wind blew dangling bits of mirror from the hairpieces in Nemaelle's snow-white hair across her cheek, and she neatly folded her hands together in front of her, dropped her gaze to her shard-encrusted skirt, and allowed the people to look up at them. Enough time had gone by for the Princess to know that the daily moments on the balcony happened for a reason... Just like there was a reason she stood one pace back, just like there was a reason she wore dresses of Azreal's design... just like there was a reason Nemaelle seemed to be relegated to listening to Azreal, and not having much to reply with.

"I still remember... when you were just a child. You made claims that the people would not revere me, do you remember?"

Nemaelle's lips thinned. "I remember, My Queen."

"But here they bow. You see, I am a benevolent ruler, Snow. I am merciful."

So long as she received ten beautiful sacrifices a day, she was merciful. "Yes..."

Azreal's silver-star eyes shut, allowing a glimpse of her perfect – though severe – dark eyeshadow. "... Feel the bite of that wind, Snow...! Autumn is here. It'll be time for the harvest." She turned and gave the Princess a smile that would have seemed friendly, if only Nemaelle didn't know what kind of woman lurked behind it. "I wonder what the people will bring in this year..." She mused as she passed, not aware of all the mean remarks Nemaelle kept perfectly held beneath her tongue.

Her little white fingers curled gently into her skirt again, preparing to follow the Queen, when her red eyes glimpsed a face she hadn't seen in... a bit over a year, Nemaelle realized, and her heart hurt for it.

Jinho.

The years had not been kind to him... They both grew up that day, seven years ago, but for all her horrors, she wagered that Jinho had it worse. He struggled through that first winter, learning to hunt in the snow. But he'd come out all the stronger for it, and that showed. He had already been three years older than her, and was seventeen to her current fourteen, but everything from his stance to the look on his face made him seem even older than that.

Of course, the frown didn't help, the way his ink-black eyes were unreadable at best... bitter at worst. But she couldn't blame him. Just like she couldn't blame how he had stopped showing up to these horrible silent statements Queen Azreal made at the balcony, a year ago. She remembered sobbing over what had happened, and she remembered that Jinho couldn't bring himself to kneel, so angry and hurt that he simply turned and left.

That horrible day, a year ago...

But there he was, when she hadn't expected to ever see his face again. Not after what had befallen him... He stood with the rest, but his boots, worn leather that would need to replaced soon, were rooted to the ground.

She realized that Azreal was no longer at the balcony. That it was just her... and if there were other eyes upon her, she didn't notice them. Only Jinho's... Her lips quivered upon opening, and she could only muster the courage to silently mouth, 'Oppa.'

Relief was a foreign feeling in those times, but when he smiled, she felt it in full force. She thought she might cry from it... She settled for resting her hand over her heart. Nemaelle hoped that the meager action said everything she wanted to say...

The silent message reached him, and he returned it. Doubled it, even, with his fist over his heart, dropping to one knee all over again. A gesture Nemaelle remembered from the days when her father ruled... Jinho's own father had knelt just like that, in loyalty to King Setsuna. Heartfelt... The seriousness of such a gesture, made at such a time, shook Nemaelle and made her realize that others were doing the same, the stragglers who had stayed behind after Azreal reentered the palace.

Dimly, she heard Azreal calling for her.

But the Princess was so moved by the display that she thoughtlessly pressed her fingers to lips, held them out toward the people as they knelt, just as she remembered her father doing...

"Snow!"

The call was sharp as broken glass, and Nemaelle hurried back inside, even as Azreal returned to the balcony to see what kept the girl out there so long. Most of the people scrambled after that... All but Jinho, who stood straight and dared to look the Queen in her shining silver eyes. She only smiled, her painted lips pulling back in a way that seemed cruel with the way her brows elegantly arched together. "Where have you been hiding for the past year, Huntsman?" She spoke loud and clear down to him, and watched as he wordlessly turned away, adjusting the quiver of plain arrows across his back, resting one hand on the hilt of his sword. Such rudeness...! "Come back soon, dear Huntsman! You bring plentiful food, but we'd much like to see your lovely face, again!"

As soon as she stepped inside, the double doors latching shut, the Princess dropped into a curtsy so low her knees touched the floor. "I'm sorry, My Queen, I...!"

Azreal's poison-honey chuckle prevented any other words from leaving Nemaelle's rosy lips. "Whatever are you sorry for, sweet Snow?"

Everything about that chilly-smooth tone told Nemaelle that she was in no way safe from scrutiny... and that knowledge was enough for Azreal, who merely took her snowy chin in her slim fingers and bade her stand, again. Another silent threat... it was exhausting, how many times the Princess felt like she narrowly dodged the fate that 10 people met, each day.

"I'm sure it's time to feed our guests. Why don't you be a good hostess and serve them?"

"Yes, My Lady." She wished she could be happy for the ability to get away from the Queen... but she was merely switching out one torture for another. Tending to the people who would eventually be killed, drained into a tub, cooked, like raising lambs for slaughter. At least she didn't have to do the slaughtering... Azreal enjoyed doing that too much to give the duty to another.

"And Snow?"

The Princess had already begun quietly whistling to herself, but stopped to look over her shoulder at Azreal.

"Perhaps you should learn an actual song, when you whistle. Your silly little notes... they sound garbled, at times."

A meek smile curled upon Nemaelle's face, even as her cheeks flared red with a swirl of different emotions, none of them bashful. "I'll work on that, Your Majesty."

Truthfully, the snowy-haired Princess did have one song that she could whistle clearly from memory, but it was a song she preferred to keep to herself. She had so very little that was all her own, now... She deserved to have a song, didn't she?

And in any case... she had never whistled purely for fun. Life in the palace was never about fun. It was about survival, and hopefully retaining some sanity, in the process. The whistling carried her through her days, through holding out platters with hearts, through rinsing blood off the Queen's body, through feeding and prettying up people before their deaths, through standing near those accursed mirror-monsters wearing the skins of the people she loved and missed...!

Yes, Nemaelle recounted bitterly as she whistled over the grinding of mirror shards under leathery skin and received arrangements of plates upon platters, grabbing two and balancing each on one arm with perfect grace. That was the worst part of all, because it was persistent – monsters in good men's clothing...! A faux Kira to follow her everywhere. It was a wonder she hadn't gone mad, long ago...

She held the platter to each holding cell, arms reaching out to take a plate and quietly thank her for the food. It never got easier. Constantly, she thought of ways to help free them... and she tried, once, a year ago. That hadn't ended well... "Ruri," Nemaelle sighed. She had one plate left on one platter, and one more 'guest' to feed... but once again Ruri's previous plate was untouched. "Ruri, you need to eat..."

"Why should I?" Oh, she was beautiful, her hair cut short and yet it worked for her. "When I know what will happen to me?"

Every now and then Azreal would bring in a defiant one, and by the end of their time in the palace, Nemaelle would be weeping. "Starvation is no way to die..."

Ruri gripped onto the iron bars with knuckles that went nearly as white as the Princess' skin. "But the Queen would release me, if starvation made me ugly, wouldn't she?"

Nemaelle's white lashes fell over her eyes, gently dusting across her skin.

"Wouldn't she?"

Her mouth was a tired, upset frown. "Ruri... she will keep you here. She will keep you here until you crack and eat whatever she gives you. She has seen your face. Nothing you do will take that away from her memory..." She leaned in close, and remembered every other person who ever tried what Ruri had insisted on doing for the past four days. "Starvation is no way to die..." She had seen it happen enough times to know.

Ruri cried as she watched the Princess kneel in her mirror-encrusted dress, laying the fresh plate on the floor by the bars, taking the old one. "Keep the apple."

Her mouth fell open, "Ruri, I couldn'-"

"Please. The food will be a waste, otherwise. Keep the apple." Tears shook every word and every sigh between them. "The rightful ruler deserves her favorite food..."

Was she the rightful ruler, after seven years of all of this? "Thank you..." She began to leave, taking the old plate with its spoiled food, leaving the new one without its apple.

"No, thank you." Nemaelle heard her speak as she walked, setting the old plates and platters on a table for a leathery-skinned servant to take to the kitchens. "No one has forgotten what you did for the Huntsman's lover. Thank you."

Should she have been thanked for that day, a year ago...? It felt like the mirror shards covering the expanse of her chest must have cut deep. Nemaelle hurried up the spiraling stone stairs that took her to the top of the tower, trying hard not to scream over how the mirror-man wearing Kira's skin kept up with her, whistling through her fear and running into her bedroom.

She had to wait for a moment, the faux Kira taking up the doorway behind her... and a macabre version of her father using golden keys to unlock the massive golden cage set over most of the tiny room. Nemaelle could never look into the shard-filled voids in the eye holes of Setsuna's skin, running into her cage, diving onto the plush bed that took up most of her room.

As soon as the mirror-man wearing the late King's hide locked her in, she cried. She cried for Ruri, and for Jinho and his lover, and for the way no one's remains had been respected, and for the way she somehow found infinitely more comfort locked inside of a cage like Queen Azreal's prized dove... So much more comfort than she did outside of it.

Maybe it was because that was the only space she was able to make into her home...? The pillows and bedsheets were all from before Azreal had come into her life. Queen Sara's embroidery of the rose with seven thorns and three blood drops hung from one of the bars like her personal dreamcatcher... and the box. Her music box; she still had that, hiding under her pillows. Even now she sometimes needed to wind it up and let the soft tinking notes cover the sound of shards of glass crunching against each other underneath old skin...

Nemaelle needed it now, pulling it out to lift the lid and let it play. The box was empty – Azreal's brother had taken almost every jewel that came from King Setsuna's reign to be either sold or reset into pieces better reflecting Queen Azreal's reign – but the locket with the miniatures of her parents remained, hiding in the secret compartment she had made in the white velvet. She fought to calm herself, whistling along perfectly to the little tune, pausing to bite into Ruri's apple-

"Don't you ever get tired of that song, Snow? 'Someday My Prince Will Come'? Don't you think he's a bit late?"

The Princess bit into the apple to hide the sneer she wanted to send her visitor. "My Lord."

"Haven't we been over this? Ezekiel. Just Ezekiel is fine." Aqua eyes smiled at her as he circled around the expanse of carpet surrounding her cage, his gloved hand brushing across each golden bar.

"Why are you here?" If she seemed rude, she didn't care, not around him. Ever since she met him, he'd been hopeful that they'd be familiar with each other... Oh, she'd give him familiar. Too bad it was icy cold like mid-winter snow.

A short, amused laugh left him, and he held a hand over his heart. "Your cruelty hurts, Snow...! I've come to check on you. Make sure you're well."

"I'm fine. I have all my fingers and toes."

"But your face is stained in tears, and you're eating an apple meant for one of our guests." He teased.

The tease missed its mark, if it meant to amuse. "She gave it to me."

"Which one? The one trying to starve herself?"

"Yes..." The answer came in a broken whisper.

Still Ezekiel circled around her, like an aqua-eyed raven circling prey. "Do you think she will succeed?"

"You _can't_ be here to talk to me about how someone might _die_."

"Why can't I be?" The smirk on his face would have been charming if it weren't for the conversation... "You know, you never eat the apples I bring you; why is that?"

"You might have put needles in them. Needles and poison."

The beautiful eyes became wide and round. "You think so little of me! Even after all this time!"

"Shouldn't I? You would've had me killed if you had your way...!"

" _That_ again..." The new Lord Chancellor sighed and came back around to face the Princess, gripping onto the gilded bars of the cage. "Nemaelle, listen to me." She hated when he used her true name. _Hated_ it. But it always got her attention, and his wonderful eyes and his little frown did the rest, keeping her focused on him. "My sister... It's not a secret that she is twisted up inside. I love her dearly, but I..." He looked away, though only briefly. "See what she has done to you over these years. Can you blame me for wanting to spare you from this? Sometimes, murder is a mercy. Tragic, but true..."

"And all the same, something I would rather avoid. I know how to persevere, in the meantime."

He chuckled. "So noble. You really have become a good young maiden."

"Ripe for the picking, I'm sure." Nemaelle bit into her apple and began winding up her music box again.

"I've told you that if I have my way, I won't let that happen to you. A pure soul deserves better... but that's why I must ask-"

"Ah, so there is a reason you're here."

"What happened on the balcony today?"

The Princess had known from the start that the time on the balcony wouldn't be overlooked. "Nothing happened... I recognized oppa's face in the crowd. It's been a long time since I've seen him. That's all."

"So your loneliness made you hold your hand out to the people like a noble?"

"Well I _am_ Princess, am I not?" Rose-red eyes looked more like fire...

But that was exactly what Ezekiel wanted. "Yes, dear Snow... you are Princess." He pushed himself away from the glimmering golden bars. "The caged Princess."

Nemaelle felt tears burning at the corners of her eyes, but she held them in, watching Ezekiel paint sympathy all over his face.

"Something must be done about your loneliness, dear Snow."

"... Leave him alone."

But the Chancellor only bowed, eyes shining like light through ocean water. "Enjoy your apple."

"Wait..." He heard her scurry off her bed as the door to her room shut. "Ezekiel, leave him _alone!_ "

Leave him alone... But that wasn't really his call to make, was it? He marched down the guest hall, arms sticking out through bars to reach their plates and eat, and took a roll of bread from Ruri's dish. Curled up in the furthest corner of her room, she seemed intent on starving, still.

Ezekiel shook his head and sighed. Oh, he'd seen enough to know that defiance never got anywhere with his beloved sister. Those first murders, especially that sneaky serpent of a woman... the woman who had started it all. Azreal had been a little too careless, then... and it cost her dearly.

He stepped into the mirror room, but was silent, folding his arms neatly behind his back as he waited. He knew better than to interrupt their conversations. Ezekiel watched as Azreal lifted the dark velvet cloth she draped over the full-length, standing mirror, catching her brother's reflection in it, as well as all the other mirrors that formed the walls of the room. She ignored him, just like she ignored nearly everything when she felt it was time to consult the man she'd locked inside of the glass. She purred, fingers traveling along the line of the fine, silver frame, "My Heart in the Magic Mirror, I Summon Thee... Speak unto Me; Show Me Thy Face...!"

His visage came through gradually, in swirls of dark smoke – tall and dark-haired, eyes like steel to Azreal's silver. "My Queen, what do you need from me?" His face was calm and blank and distant, but Azreal traced the line of his jaw in the reflection.

"Your honest answer."

"My Queen knows I can give her nothing but the truth."

"Good... Because God knows you were enough of a liar before I put you here." Barbs grew out of her words without warning, but he took them, his face ever the same. Pleasant, but cold and unreadable.

"Yes, My Queen."

She scoffed, enjoying the fact that he could deny nothing. "My Heart, I would ask if I am fair. Doesn't my Kingdom revere me, admire my beauty and grace? Am I not kind?"

Her cheek rested where his heart would be, and though glass separated them, he reacted, his face tilting toward hers as he spoke. "You ask many questions at once, My Queen. But it is true that you are a most renowned beauty. The people of your Kingdom do not dispute this simple fact; you are among the most graceful and lovely. And I have seen what you are capable of, My Queen. What you give them is most merciful in the face of all your power."

Azreal had begun to smile as Her Heart spoke to her from across the mirror she had shoved him into. "It is true... I could be much worse than I have been, and you know this well, don't you?"

"I do, My Queen."

"Do you still remember, My Heart...? Do you remember that day, when I put you here?"

"My Queen, every memory of you rings true as a bell. I will never forget how bewildered you were that it ever happened."

"Yes... but that was the start of something wonderful. I have not aged a day, since then. And it all started with your brown-haired whore from Eden." She grinned cruelly up at him. "I enjoyed making you watch her die... but do you know what I liked even more?"

"You enjoyed taking her life into you, My Queen. I remember." Oh, this was not the first time Queen Azreal had recounted her very first murder, and Her Heart knew it wouldn't be the last.

"It was a shock, but oh, such a pleasant one...! And how easy it is to take a life... I will be beautiful forever, the most fair, and you will always be here to tell me so."

"I will always be here to tell you the truth, My Queen."

Something about the way he worded that particular truth made her look up at him. "And am I not the most fair?"

"You are among the most beautiful of them all, My Queen, and certainly lenient and kind in consideration of your amazing ruthlessness... but all these things do not make you the most fair."

Very, very rarely did Azreal hear such displeasing things from Her Heart. "... Then I am not the most fair?"

"No, My Queen. Another is younger; her beauty and her kindness threatening to take all of your power."

She... couldn't respond. There were no words. Ever since the day she'd taken matters into her own hands, she'd been the best of them all, enchanting and murdering her way across the forests and into Assiah. She'd had it in mind to kill them all, but had kept to a meager 10 per day. 10! A great mercy for those sorry people! "... Wh... What did you say, My Heart?"

"Already there are surely signs, My Queen. Your men hold themselves together using skins because you cannot. Not perpetually, as you used to."

"... I had thought merely to make them easy to differentiate..." She said weakly, quietly. Had she been lying to herself?

"Soon, my Queen, 10 lives per day will not be enough to continue using your magic as often as you have. Your power will wane, and you will be the same woman that you were before you imprisoned me."

"What, a weak and stupid lovelorn woman? Never!" She spat at the floor by the reflection of his feet.

"Your Kingdom will notice, just as they have noticed the maiden who rises from behind you, like day swallows the night. And they will take all you have gained and give it unto the maiden. You will be as you were before you even met me... lost in the dirt, My Queen."

 _"Enough!"_ Azreal screamed at the mirror, eyes like white-hot stars, like lightning trapped inside of her. "Who is this accursed maiden? Tell me so that I can rip out her heart and eat it raw!"

Her Heart tilted his head up just so, his face utterly tranquil at best, unfeeling at worst. "She is quite close to you, My Queen; already you have her captured in a golden cage."

"... Snow!" The name came out in a scratchy, sharp as mirror shards, enraged warcry.

"The same, My Queen." Her Heart said simply, plainly, truthfully.

Azreal's painted lips were agape with her utter anger, silver eyes darting about the room, to every reflection of herself, of the man in her mirror, of her brother standing by the door. "I... I should have killed her when she was a child!"

"Told you so..." Ezekiel couldn't help himself, smiling, speaking with teasing sing-song tones.

 _"Silence!"_ She hissed at her brother, suddenly pacing the room, her royal purple skirt fanning out behind her. "Well then, there's no issue. I already have the brat captured. I'll just strangle her, cut her open and bleed her out into my bath, take her life into me and that will be that, won't it?"

"Do not be so sure, My Queen. As early as last year a ripple has run through your people; word of the Princess' great kindness and desire to protect them. Just this morning there is one who was so bold as to bend his knee unto her. The effect has already begun, My Queen." Her Heart reasoned with her.

"Ah, but I have an idea..." Ezekiel spoke up again, aqua eyes following his sister as she moved.

"Oh, do you?" Azreal spun toward her brother in a flurry of purple fabric and golden bits of glass. "What, set the men upon the villages? Clean out everything?"

"No, no; you'd deplete your supply, dear sister, and we'd have to move." He crossed further into the room and took hold of her bare shoulders in some small attempt to keep her steady. "These... matters of state, I suppose we should call them. They are quite delicate. But if you know the right targets, you can conquer anything. So then, we get rid of the girl, obviously. I've been saying that for years."

She struck him, and he took the hit, though it caused a bit of blood to settle in his mouth. "Be careful of your arrogance, brother. The only reason you don't have crow's feet at your eyes is because of me."

"Oh, I'm not quite that old, yet." Ezekiel reasoned with a frown. "But yes, we get rid of the girl. We also get rid of that boy who showed his face this morning."

"The Huntsman?"

"Yes. He pledged loyalty to her, dear sister. I would wager that if anyone is going to spearhead a coup from the outside, it would be him. Am I not right, Lucifer?"

Her Heart said nothing.

"... Ask your accursed mirror. I _know_ he can hear me... but I guess even being _locked in a mirror and cursed_ doesn't change everything, does it?" Ezekiel spoke loudly, giving the mirror an aqua-eyed glare.

"Is this true, My Heart?" Azreal left her brother to reach out to the mirror again, her fingers curling around the frame. "Would that Huntsman be my undoing?"

"If you do not somehow hamper him, My Queen, yes. You took away his parents when he was but a child and left him to his own devices. Just last year, you took away his lover, in broad daylight. His heart is heavy and lit on fire. In time, he could very well commence a coup."

"But...!" Ezekiel interjected, "If we play our cards right, we can use this anger to our advantage."

"And how, exactly, would we play our cards right?" Azreal asked over her shoulder.

"We have to bear in mind that it may not be easy to capture the Huntsman. But with the right incentive, you could lure him in." It was Ezekiel's turn to pace, though he did so slowly, gracefully, thoughtfully. "And Lucifer spoke of your power waning... so let's not push it so much; let's preserve it. We can send out a summons in Snow's name... I'll get him myself, in case that should fail. And when he gets here, we'll tell him that we would like him to kill her."

Azreal's eyes narrowed into thin slits. "And how do we convince her ally to kill her?"

"I can think of a couple different ideas. We could use both." He smiled. "We can play off the death of his lover. Make it seem that the Princess could have done more, or that by doing what she'd done she had only expedited and worsened his lover's death. Try to make him hate the girl. And then, to further pressure the man... Bribe him." He shrugged. "Bribe him with a lie."

"... A lie." She looked up into the calm face of Her Heart. "What does he mean?"

"My Queen, he wants you to tell the Huntsman that you would bring back his lover from the dead. For the whole

Kingdom knows that you take life, and even that you've given it to your brother."

"Who's to say you couldn't literally resurrect someone, right?" Ezekiel smiled when his sister turned back to him.

Her head tilted, her finger tapping against her chin as she considered the plan... and she smiled. "Draft up the summons; forge her signature if she won't sign it herself. I want him here first thing tomorrow morning."


	6. Into the Forest

**Queen of Mirrors, Queen of Arrows  
** _Into the Forest  
_ By: Brenli

"Ah, there he is, after so long...! Welcome, Huntsman!" Queen Azreal had just returned from her morning bath, sending the Princess off to tend to the 'guests.' True enough, Ezekiel had been right in assuming it would be easy to lure him in with the promise of seeing Nemaelle...

But no sooner than he'd stepped into the palace courtyard, Jinho had known something was wrong. Either that, or seeing the guards and servants up close shook him enough to want to leave. So they were real, then... not magic... Huntsman that he was, he knew enough about tanning hides, but this? This made him sick.

"You seem pale, Huntsman. Are you all right?"

Ink-black eyes looked up at the Queen in her glassy finery, blood-red with shards jutting up and out from her hips, from all around her shoulders. She was lovely, but in a way that made Jinho want to run. "I've just... never been this close to... these."

Azreal smiled. "Actually, you were, once. Your hands bear the scars to prove it."

"Where is Snow?" He really didn't want to talk about the walking hides at either side of him.

"So eager...! You haven't even knelt before me, yet." She tilted her head in a nod, and suddenly Jinho heard the grinding of glass and felt hands push him to his knees. "The Princess is busy tending to the guests. You must excuse her."

He struggled to stand up again, but the men at either side of them had him pinned. He only managed to lift one knee from the floor. "Then... I won't be seeing her, today?"

"Oh, you may see her as soon as you like." The Queen leaned back in her throne, nails drumming on the arms of it. "But first, I would like to have a chat with you about her."

"I don't know what I could say that would interest you. You've lived with her for seven years. I haven't so much as seen her in one year. If anything, I should be the one asking for a chat about her." Jinho spoke flatly.

"And that is precisely what I would like to do, dear Huntsman. You see..." She stood, descending the few steps toward him. "We at the palace think often of that day, a year ago."

Dark eyes turned to the floor. "... She rests, now."

"Oh, of course she does..." Azreal felt him flinch when she took his face in her hands, her nails sharp against his tan skin. "But we feel horribly for how her parting was... conducted, for lack of a better term."

She watched as he glared up at her, but apart from his obvious discomfort, he was strangely unreadable. At least, for now. "If... if this is an apology-"

"This is no apology, dear... dashing Huntsman." The Queen traced his lips with a finger. "I did what I had to do."

"I find it very hard to believe that you _have_ to kill anyone to begin with, Your Majesty!" Jinho felt her nails bite into his cheeks, and he gritted his teeth through the pain of it.

"You don't know anything, poor young man...!" She could not fight the hiss that left her, but from the outer corner of her vision, Ezekiel was shaking his head. Oh, if his plan didn't work she would put gashes in his face...! "There is a certain... protocol, to the way I must run things. I want you to understand that while she was in the guest hall, she was kept comfortable. The Princess Snow knows this, as I have her tend to the guests. She feeds them three times a day, Huntsman. Bathes them, dresses them. They live like the nobility while they are here."

"And the slaughter?"

A corner of her mouth lifted. "Humane. Quick and clean."

Jinho reached up and tore Azreal's hand away from his face, not caring about the crescent-shaped indents her nails left behind. "Not from what I saw."

"What you _saw_ , Huntsman, was the result of your wonderful Princess allowing that girl you loved to run free!"

"You did not have to _flay_ her out in the yard!" His voice was half-cry, half-roar.

"And you should know that glass is glass, and glass cuts! I need these gifts from the people, Huntsman. I do not expect such simple people to understand my complexities, but your Princess? Your beloved friend? She has a hand in all of this, and she _knew_ that releasing that girl you loved would likely result in painful death!" As he fought off the macabre hands holding him down and stood again, she continued, "Be angry for the loss of your little lover. Be angry at me if you wish. But be aware that Snow is deserving of your anger, too; you were _right_ to stand and leave her at the balcony the following day!"

"Why are you doing this?" The Huntsman snapped, bravely facing the Queen, though his strength was little compared to her own. "Hmm? I finally feel like maybe I could return from the forest, that I could deliver my kills in person and maybe endure your moments at the balcony, and then you swoop in like the witch you are-"

"The _Queen_ I am, dear Huntsman...!" Azreal corrected him, though she couldn't deny her power. "And I am doing this because I have an order for you."

"An order?" Jinho was already trying to pack away his rage, the struggle showing in his voice, in a twitch of his dark brows. "I suppose my kills aren't large enough to accommodate for your so-called guests?"

"Your kills accommodate them just fine, but _I_ require a kill."

"No." He refused plainly.

"You haven't even heard all I have to say."

"I don't need to. You want me to slay Snow. The answer is no."

"Even after how I've made it clear that she gambled _carelessly_ with your lover's life?"

"I'm not an assassin! I'm a huntsman; I kill deer and boar! Ducks and geese! Turkeys! Things such as these, I will kill for you. Not people! I'm not like you! I _refuse_ your order!"

He felt those hands on his shoulders again, forcing him down, but what kept him from fighting were the spears and swords, all of them immediately pointed straight at him. If not for those, he would have liked to wring the Queen's beautiful neck...

"This is interesting... If I didn't know better, I'd say a father was preparing to kill his own son. How sad..."

Jinho's gaze followed the direction Azreal's star-like eyes had turned toward, and his breath came up short in his throat. The skin had darkened and turned leathery, and the eyes were holes full of shards. He knew his father was long dead, seven years dead, but that didn't stop him from frowning and whispering out loud, "Appa..."

"Don't be careless, Huntsman," Ezekiel came forward to stand beside his sister, "Taking Queen Azreal's offer would be most wise."

"Is that so...?" He gave them a miserable smile and shook his head. "Do it. Just do me the favor. I've wanted to meet my end every day for the past year. I beg you to do it."

Azreal sighed, "Is that the point behind this...? You want to meet with your little lover again? Oh, what was her name... wasn't it-"

"Don't." He grumbled low in his throat. "After what you did to her, you have no right to speak her name!"

"And what if I could undo what I've done...? If I could return her to you?"

"As what? A leathery, glass-filled ragdoll? I'd rather remember her as she was before you took her from me!"

The Queen smiled, and it would have seemed warm if she wasn't speaking of death. "But I could bring her back, Huntsman. Just as she was before I made her one of my guests."

"How? With Snow's life?"

"Precisely that."

Jinho sneered up at her. "You can do many things, Your Majesty, but even you can't play with death."

Azreal's painted lips gave him a patronizing little smile. "Why not? I play with life. Those gifts I have brought to me... why do you think I end their lives?" A few mirror-men hiding under skin moved aside to let their Queen approach, to let her cup his cheek in her hand. "So that I might live, dear Huntsman. I take their lives into me... surely, then, I can put a life into your lover and bring her back to you."

He looked up at her face, still every bit as young and beautiful as the day he'd first seen her... "Snow's life for hers."

"Yes. Snow's life for hers." Her smile faltered, just slightly... just enough to fool him. "I'm afraid that becoming a maiden has made her rather... uncontrollable. A little lash out here, an ignored order there... I have overheard that she plans to try and release more of my guests. Dear Huntsman, if it comes to that it will be just the same as last year." Her thumb passed over his skin. "I see the pain that day has caused you... would you dare risk that pain befalling others? I don't want it any more than you do... but if I could redeem myself in this way, then I would like to. Snow's life for your lover's."

She watched as Jinho's face briefly twisted in mental turmoil... and then gradually smoothed itself out into something handsome, but guarded. In the vaguest of ways it reminded her of Her Heart... "What do you want me to do?" He asked cautiously.

"When you meet with her, I would like to give you leave to roam the land freely. Take her somewhere quiet... The forest would seem a perfect place, don't you think? Kill her there. It doesn't matter how... but you must bring back her heart for this to work. Her life force rests within it."

"You don't want..." He paused, feeling sick that he would consider this, "... the body?"

"Her body would be useful to me, but no... not this time. If I change my mind, I will send my brother out to you and you can retrieve it for me." She tried to read his careful face. There were tiny hints – a tenseness in his jaw and in his brow – but it was not enough to tell if she had him where she wanted him. "Do we have an agreement, dear Huntsman?"

The pause crawled slowly on, and the guards didn't pull their weapons away until he finally spoke. "... We have an agreement, Queen."

Suddenly Azreal's mood brightened, and it frightened him as he stood, again. "Ezekiel, send for the girl! I know she's been dying to see him all morning."

Dying being the operative word, Jinho was sure. He'd agreed to do it, but it left horrible knots in his stomach and an ache in his heart. But he... he needed her back. He needed his love back. Six months together had not been enough.

When she stepped into the room, she wore a dress unlike the usual jagged, threatening finery. The previous pieces had always made the Princess seem like she was trapped in dangerous shards... and, well, she was trapped; she had been for the past seven years. But the dress on her body was different, the skirt bell-shaped and bunched up at points around the knees all the way down to her feet. A square-shaped mirror punctuated each gathered point, but the edges hid safely under folds of soft – and red? – fabric, and the bodice... definitely something new, a deep plunge bravely revealing the shadows and curves of her torso, all outlined in little squares of mirror...

As she cried out, "Oppa!" and tackled him with a long-awaited embrace, he realized that everything about the dress had been deliberately planned by the Queen. Soft and apple-red and poofy to make her feel happy and safe... the chest exposed so that he could easily cut out her heart. Azreal had been counting on him saying yes to her scheme.

"I've missed you...! I've missed you; I've missed you so much, oppa...!"

She wept, and Jinho remembered when she would get tangled up in apple trees, and how he'd once gotten into so much trouble for watching her and doing nothing to stop her. He realized he was weeping, too.

"Look at the both of you, blubbering like children!" Queen Azreal was back on her throne, her smile appropriately chilly. "Go, dear Huntsman, spend the day with her. She has earned the reunion."

He tried hard to ignore that a mean voice in the back of his head cried out that Nemaelle had apparently earned her death. Death at the hand of her only friend... Jinho drowned out the voice with her own. She was sniffling and laughing and pulling him out of the palace, weeping and challenging him to a race to the edge of the forest, on horseback, and she was a mess, and he'd forgotten how absolutely lively she could be. It was a breath of fresh air.

"Let's go, oppa!"

He wondered when she had found the time to learn to ride a horse... God, she wasn't even riding the thing properly, sitting upon it like a man with her skirt bunched up around her knees. Her feet too far into the stirrups. But the horse seemed to love her, had a merry way of galloping across the grass toward the line of trees. He kept up well enough, seeing tears drip from her face, even as she smiled and laughed and the wind tossed her hair about.

She won, but didn't seem to care that she won, immediately dismounting. As soon as he'd gotten off his own horse, she was hugging him all over again. "God... I haven't been this far from the palace in seven years...!"

"How do you do it...?" He wasn't even sure what he meant by that question, but it was the first thing that left his mouth. _How_ did she...?

She blinked tears down her rosy cheeks. "How do I do what?" Snow-white hands wiped away her tears. "I can't stop crying...!"

"I know, I... I can't either." That was the truth. He could feel the wetness on his face. It refused to dry out... "God, Snow... She has my... she has appa's skin..."

Nemaelle's smile shrank away, and she nodded, pulling him toward the forest... he made sure to grab his bow and his quiver of arrows. Maybe... maybe it would be easier if he did it from a distance...

"She has my father's, too... and Kira's... and Moonlil's... Everyone, oppa. Everyone from court."

"How do you live like that...?"

The Princess looked up at him with tear-stained red eyes, like raindrops on rose petals. "I don't know... I just... do." She held her skirt as they moved deeper and deeper into the woods. Jinho could have sworn that creatures were... following her. Tweeting birds. A few squirrels. "I mean, I... I'd be lying if I said that I hadn't thought about... I don't know. Trying."

"Trying..."

"Yeah, like... throwing myself off the balcony one of these times. Not so much anymore, but. At first? Definitely. And, um... last year."

Suddenly his fingers itched as they clutched onto his bow. "Snow..."

"I wanted to beg forgiveness, oppa... Your girl, she... I'm not sure that she liked me very much." She laughed weakly, turned to speak to him as she walked backwards. "She threw her food at me...! It was a mess. My platters toppled right over and food was all over the hall..."

Despite himself, Jinho suddenly laughed. "That sounds like her...!"

"So you're into bratty women, then? Did she throw food at you, too?"

"Fists, not food."

Nemaelle shook her head at him. "You have the weirdest taste, I swear."

"I'll remember that when you've..." His voice trailed off.

She only gave him a sad, forgiving little smile. "... She had heart, though. And she loved you a lot."

The Huntsman nodded, the memories both painful and soothing. "That whole thing was... I don't know. Reckless, I suppose. But she was... like the sun. Those six months..." He stopped. She stopped. "I miss those six months, Snow. I loved each month so, so much..."

"... That's why I tried to free her." Pale hands crossed over her pale chest. "When she spoke of you... her eyes would just light right up, oppa. And you deserve that. You deserve light in your life."

"... So do you, Snow." And yet he planned to drown her in darkness, drown her until she died.

The Princess shook her head. "I think you and I both know that's not true."

Such an ominous thing to say... perhaps too ominous. "... Sn-"

"Awwwww... look! Bunnies!" She turned, parted bushes surrounding a tree to find a group of rabbits that had gathered before her. What was it with the creatures? The birds were still there. The squirrels, too... What was next? A stag?

Maybe it was the Queen's doing. Sending distractions to make his job easier... So he was quick to steel himself, to take an arrow from his quiver and ready his shot... Oh, his hands shivered hard, his breath stuck in his throat, tears blurred his vision...

He let the arrow fly.

With a hard thunk... the arrowhead planted itself in the wood of the tree, just to the right of Nemaelle's head.

"You missed."

And she was so sad, so... calm. Jinho's knees suddenly buckled to the forest floor. "Oh, God...!"

"Get up, oppa..." Nemaelle turned back around to face him, frowning, holding back every sob she had lined up inside of her. "Ready another arrow."

Ink-black eyes were wide and horrified as he blinked up at her. "You knew?"

"Oppa, it's been seven years...! Seven! The Queen never cared about my wish to see you, before. The day after you pledge loyalty to me, she sends her brother to tell me they're granting me the right to invite you to court. I'm... look at what I'm _wearing...!_ Red!" Her lips pressed together to hold back a cry. "... Yes, oppa. I knew. I've known since I signed the summons. I've had all of last night to come to terms with it... Ready another arrow."

He clambered to his feet and plucked another arrow from his quiver. "... Snow..."

"Yes?" She steeled herself, and in that moment she seemed so much older than fourteen.

"Can I just...?"

"Whatever you need, oppa... I owe you that."

Jinho's entire body shook, more tears tumbling down his face. "... Is... is it true? That you gambled with her life?"

Snowy lashes fell over her sorry cheeks. "It's always a gamble... But she was slated to die and... and she loved you so much...! So much, oppa! And you deserve that. I _want_ that for you, so badly...! After everything that's happened, after everything you lost. I just... wanted you to have _happiness._ Maybe it was wrong of me to try. Was it wrong of me, oppa...?"

He hated that he didn't have an answer...

"I remember that day... I remember how she... just..."

"Dead..."

"Cut to ribbons..."

"I collapsed..."

"I did, too. I saw you and I... God, I felt like I failed you, oppa!"

His frown quivered. "I don't remember the rest of that day... It's been blacked out of my memory."

"Do you remember the balcony...?"

Jinho nodded. "I hated you."

"I hated me."

"I walked away..."

"And I cried. I wanted to die." Her fingers twisted together, fidgeting, sobs finally breaking through. "Last night, I... I thought to myself that... this is okay. I mean... if you want this... it's okay, oppa. If you've agreed to this for... for revenge or... or anything. It's okay. If you want to take my life, take it... You deserve it."

Readying his arrow was suddenly torturous, even more torturous than before. He aimed. He faltered. "Snow... This isn't revenge. I don't, I don't know what this is..."

Her snowy shoulders shrugged. "Does it help if I say that I want this...?"

A moment crawled by slowly, without even a single one of the little birds chirping. "... Is this your balcony?"

"I don't know, maybe?" Nemaelle wept. "Oppa, we have been through so much...! And I'm... I'm fourteen and I already feel done. I feel tired. I feel like my heart's used up. I'm over it. I'm done...! And I... I kind of... _like_ that it's you, oppa. I really do. I always figured, oh, one day Azreal will think I'm ready to take, and she'll do just that. Cut me open, eat my heart, bathe in my blood. I've always thought that; I've been counting the days! But this... if it's you... If I ever wanted anyone to kill me... I want it to be the one who knows what I lost. I want it to be my best friend." The confession suddenly made her sob, and she buried her face in ashamed hands. "That sounds so twisted...! But it's true! It's how I feel! Maybe she broke me, after all. Maybe I'm daft, and I just never realized it?"

"God, Snow...!" Jinho cried with her, pointing the arrow at the ground. "What has she done to us? I can't do this!"

"But you have to, oppa. I don't know what she'd do if you refused. I don't want to know." She took two deep breaths, trying to steel herself again. "Just... revenge. It's revenge. I deserve it. Okay?"

"But it's not revenge, Snow!"

"Mercy killing, then. End this, oppa."

The Huntsman shook his head. "It's not that, either...! Snow, she... she's going to take your heart and... use it to bring my..."

"Resurrection?"

He could only nod, and saw a small smile cross her sorrowful face.

"... Then that's... even better than anything I could have hoped for."

"Then she's really able to do it?"

The Princess shrugged. "I have no idea, oppa. She's never done it, before, but I don't know anything about her, other than that she's twisted up inside. I feel sorry for her, every day. But if... if that's the plan... God, oppa, do it. Take my heart. If I give myself in order to make you happy, that's the best thing...! It's everything I want to do!"

He stared at her as she smiled at him... smiled in the face of death. She was fourteen, he was seventeen. It was so wrong, to be so young and arranging a murder, consenting to being killed...! He readied his arrow again, pointed it squarely at her chest as she brushed her long, white hair behind her shoulders.

She took a single, deep breath, and shut her eyes. "Aim true, oppa."

He pulled back on the arrow, taking deep breaths of his own, blinking the tears out of his eyes so that he could see her clearly and aim straight for her heart. He wanted it to be quick. He wanted to make her death as painless as possible. She deserved it, she deserved better than what life had given her, she...

Wind played with her hair, as if to soothe her, and she smiled.

"I can't!" Sobs took over him, and he fell to his knees again, dropping his bow. "Snow, I can't...! We've lost so much! I've lost everyone I've ever cared for... I'm not going to physically take the only one I have left. I'm not!"

"But... what about her?"

He shook his head. "I want her back... Every day, I want her back, but Snow...! Not this way! This is no way to bring someone back from the dead!"

Nemaelle felt like she had been stretched to her limits, and she stepped back, through the bushes, finding the tree Jinho had shot. "Then what do we do...?"

The Huntsman climbed back to his feet, slipping the unused arrow back into his quiver. "You run. You're already out here. Run. Now."

"But what about _you?_ Oppa, Azreal isn't going to let this slide! That's not how she is!"

"You let me figure out that part."

"But if you-"

"If I...!" Jinho felt an initial tremor of fear run through him, but he endured it, pushed past it. "Snow, if that happens... I'll be with her, again."

They shared a look as the birds began to nervously tweet, rose-red and ink-black eyes, and Nemaelle nodded. "... Good luck, oppa." But when she turned to run deep into the forest, he suddenly hurried forward and grabbed her hand.

"Wait. We need a way to find each other... In case I get out of this okay."

Her snowy brows furrowed together. "Like... like what? A call?"

He smiled at her suggestion. "Yes, like a whistle of some kind."

"Okay. I can do a whistle."

"You make it. I want it to be something you'll remember."

She blinked, hesitated while he waited... and she finally let out a series of notes.

"... 'Someday My Prince Will Come'?"

The Princess blushed bright red. "Shut up, oppa..."

"Really, though? 'Someday My Prince Will Come'?"

"You _said_ you wanted a call I'd remember! I'll remember _that!_ " Her rosy cheeks puffed out in a pout that he hadn't seen in seven long, horrible years.

"Okay, okay! Silly romance song, it is..."

"I'm going to throw a rock at you, I swear..."

He held up his hands in passiveness, but jerked his head toward the darkness of the woods behind her. "Go. Run. Run until your legs give out. Put as much distance between you and the palace as you can... I'll track you."

With a final wave, Nemaelle turned and disappeared into the dark... leaving Jinho with no heart to give the Queen. But maybe another heart would suffice. An animal heart. A boar would be close enough to pass for a human heart, possibly... Or a deer, a deer would be-

He froze when he turned and came face to face with a stag. A _stag_... If he thought the animal would understand him, he would've told it that it was late to the Nemaelle-worshipping. What was it with the animals...? Sure, in their childhoods he remembered birds coming uncommonly close to her, but the stag was above and beyond...!

And then the stag seemed to... bow to him. To bow to him, and then offer up its neck. It was... sacrificing itself?

Jinho looked to the path the Princess had taken, and back to the stag. "... I hope this isn't a trick..." But he drew his dagger from his hip, and made quick work of slitting the stag's throat, bleeding it out before taking its heart.

He held his breath during the entire trip to the palace, leading both horses back with the stag's heart dripping from his bag, staining the side of his horse with blood. The Queen was pleased... more than that. Ecstatic, gripping the heart with a grin before handing it off to a leathery-skinned servant. She rained thanks and promises upon him, swearing that soon his love would be in his arms, again... she even invited him to dine?

Azreal didn't mind when he declined, claiming that the killing had exhausted him and that he wanted to rest early. Of course the murder had taken a lot of out of him... though she stirred up as much anger and pain within him as she could, she knew that he was also still the young boy who had nearly saved Nemaelle from her mirror-shard clutches. The act would leave him with a heavy heart, no matter what...

A heavy heart that at one point, after luring him back with the false claim of a resurrected lover, she wanted to eat.

But that night she had the Princess of Assiah's heart...! Already it was on its way to the kitchen, to be boiled and seasoned with salt. She couldn't wait! The Queen hurried to the mirror room, nearly danced to Her Heart, pulling off the velvet cover, summoning him with a smile.

"My Queen, what do you need from me?"

"Very little, My Heart! So little... only your honest answer. Did you mean it when you told me that the Princess' heart would be the last heart I truly need?" Her fingers rested against the glass that shielded his chest.

Her Heart's calm face spoke softly. "Nemaelle's heart will be the last heart you take, My Queen."

"Eating it will make me young forever? I will never age again?"

"If you were to eat it, My Queen. Yes. The heart of one touched by the sorceress in the borderlands is forever changed... to bring her life into you is to make you as powerful as the sorceress herself. You will be eternal, My Queen..."

Such bliss was so rare, so overwhelming that Azreal embraced her mirror. "I will be forever beautiful, My Heart...? I will be the fairest of all?"

"No, My Queen. Not the fairest."

Azreal stepped away from the man in her mirror, confusion arching her immaculate, night-sky brows together. "... But... I have her heart. I have Nemaelle's heart!"

"You do not, My Queen." Lucifer said evenly, as Ezekiel walked in, bearing the plate with the seasoned heart upon it.

She pointed feverishly to the heart and screamed, making her brother jump. "What is that, then?"

Steel-gray eyes glanced at the heart and then back to his Queen. "It is the heart of a stag. The Huntsman has tricked you."

The silence was sharp as shards of broken glass, Her Heart looking at her plainly, her brother nervously... until she finally exploded, closing in on her brother and hitting the plate out of his hand. "You! You told me this would work!"

Ezekiel's aqua eyes were wide and fearful. "Sister, I-"

She sent shards at his face... three of them, leaving long gashes in a row along his cheek. "If I hadn't listened to you, I'd be _bathing_ in her blood right now! I would be _immortal!_ Truly immortal!"

"We will _find_ her, sister!" Ezekiel insisted, holding a hand to his bloody cheek. "She is but one girl and we are many! I will form a hunting party... seventy gold pieces for every man who joins in the hunt. No villager could resist!"

"For your sake, you best hope so, or your heart is next." Her words were acid, burning through to his soul and shaking him. "Leave. Leave now before I _carve_ your face open!"

As her brother stumbled out of the mirror room, Azreal spun toward Her Heart and hissed at him, "Would it kill you to be upfront? Even with you _cursed_ you still... you still...!"

"My Queen," Her Heart said simply, "I will always be honest with you. But you must ask the right questions."

"The right _questions?_ " She threw the dark velvet over him, shutting him out, and marched out onto the balcony. Angry hands planted themselves firmly on the banister, and she shut her silver-star eyes. Ravens flew past her, ravens made of mirror shards, flying out above the forest, into it...

She found them, eventually, though she wasn't sure which mirror-raven had discovered them, where that raven ended up. Her power had reached its limit, straining... but despite the quiver in her arms, she kept watching.

The liar of a Huntsman had found the Princess, already... had carved rings into a tree... and she held a crystal bow in her hands. King Setsuna's crystal bow...!

"You're holding it all wrong, Snow..." Jinho said, crossing his arms. "Your back isn't straight enough."

Nemaelle attempted to straighten out her back, but he only sighed.

"Don't you normally wear corsets? How are you not able to have your back straight?"

"I'm _trying_ , oppa..." She readjusted her posture yet again. "Maybe having a bodice with actual boning would help, though..."

He shook his head. "I wish I could say we could get you one soon, but... I think we're going to keep hiding under the trees for a long while. Just to be safe. Take the shot when you're ready, Snow..."

Nemaelle slowly, cautiously pulled the glinting, strangely crystalline bowstring back, and from the mirror-shard eyes of the raven Azreal noticed the tops of two heads slowly rising from thick shrubs... one deep mahogany brown, and the other violet and shining in the light that filtered down from through the forest leaves.

"... The girl?" A quiet, feminine voice came from the violet head, whispering.

"The deer all say it is her, yes." The mahogany head replied in an equally low whisper, though deeper, masculine, calming and refreshing like lush ferns and moss upon tree bark.

"She seems out of place..."

Nemaelle released the arrow. It went whizzing away, far too wide, missing the tree by a foot and disappearing into the forest.

"... And a poor shot."

"Zeph...!" But the mahogany head shook with laughter, and so did the violet one.

The two low heads weren't the only ones laughing, Jinho letting out a rare, deep, chest-rumbling guffaw. As soon as he noticed blood-red eyes glaring at him, framed in icy-white lashes, his laugh faltered, stumbled, mutated into a cough and a polite clapping.

"I know I suck, oppa!" The Princess heard her voice twist into a whine, and yet she wasn't sure what she was expecting. Seven years in a cage left her with a lot to learn...

"You'll get better...!" He insisted.

"I don't need to fetch the arrow, right?"

"No. Apparently the sorceress enchanted them. After the seventh one strikes they eventually... just, reappear. That's what appa would say, anyway. I never saw it in action."

"... You've had this thing for seven years and you never used it? Not once?"

Suddenly the glint of clear crystal appeared from behind the two heads hiding in the shrubs, followed by a third head... black hair. "I almost got hit in the eye...!"

 _"Miharu?"_ The other two heads were both shocked and... slightly upset?

"Hey." Little hands planted themselves on the top of the shrubs and pulled them down, three faces appearing, two with skin the color of mocha, and a pale one, though her skin wasn't a match for the snow-white skin of the Princess. "So who almost hit me?"

The violet-haired woman gently shushed her. "The girl did, but we should go."

"Already...? But isn't she the one the deer offered sacrifice for?" Miharu's dark eyes turned to the mahogany-haired man. "Right, Uriel?"

"She is, but it's too soon. Look at her." Uriel motioned to the Princess as she bantered with Jinho, "She is completely out of tune with the forest."

"So shouldn't we help? Hey...! Zephyr, wait...!" Miharu stumbled as Zephyr began pulling her away into the woods.

"We're two feet shorter than her, Miharu. Be reasonable."

"But she has to meet us, eventually... At least Uriel...!"

Uriel smiled, "I'm a patient dwarf. Let the Huntsman get her acclimated... _then_ we'll seek her out." His hand delicately pried Zephyr's from Miharu's blouse, only to hold on to it. "Let's go home..."

Miharu rolled her eyes, but followed them, the shrubs springing back up to conceal them. "Heigh ho, heigh ho..." She sighed.

"Miharu, leave the arrow, okay?" Zephyr whispered over her shoulder.

"Yeah, yeah..."

Suddenly crystal came flying toward the mirror-shard raven, striking it, shattering it into a thousand tiny pieces... and sending a huge wave of pain through Azreal, so strong it made her collapse, clinging hard onto the banister. For a moment, she was blind, and she found herself whimpering in panic until she'd blinked the blankness out of her eyes. That should not have exhausted her, should not have caused her pain...

She needed Nemaelle's heart.


	7. Hunted

**Queen of Mirrors, Queen of Arrows  
** _Hunted  
_ By: Brenli

"So... Is the coast clear?"

A pale finger held itself over lips that were puckered and lightly stained with the juice of mulberries.

The companion sighed and plopped down on a nearby log, snow slipping away from the bark. "Heigh ho, heigh ho..."

Winter settled in with the usual bite, but that didn't stop a few birds and a squirrel from keeping the Princess in the forest company, fattened up as though anticipating to stay with her. "... I think... we're fine."

Away from any unwanted presences, the pair suddenly burst into smiles and laughter that turned into cloudy puffs in the chilly air, a pair of girls rushing forward to embrace each other. "Twenty one, Snowy!" The shorter of the two, the dark-haired dwarf, exclaimed with a strange kind of pride. "You've made it to adulthood!"

"Do you think she'll leave me alone, then?" Nemaelle supposed the joke was dark, but Miharu found the humor in it, unlike the Huntsman ever would. She knelt in the snow, bringing her face-to-face with the laughing dwarf who took her face in her hands.

"Mmm... I think not. You'll have no choice but the slay the Witch Queen, I think." She teased in return, black humor for black. "Burn her. A great roast to give to the wolves."

The Princess rolled her rose-red eyes, taking Miharu's hands in her own. "I don't think so, Miha..."

"I know, I know. You feel _sorry_ for her." It was the dwarf's turn to roll her eyes.

Nemaelle leaned to one side, her gloved hand planting into the snow as she picked at one of several pale, lacy scraps sewn together to make the skirt of her dress. "One day I will be old and wrinkled as a peach pit, and she'll leave me alone." The squirrel skittered onto the back of her hand, and she smiled as its gray tail twitched.

"That'll be a long time from now." She crossed her arms over her chest. "Listen to you, Snowy, spoiling your birthday within moments! Twenty one is still young; enjoy your youth!" Her mouth pursed into a pout as their eyes met. The Princess, enjoying the thing that the Queen coveted and wanted to rob from her? "Heigh ho..." Miharu sighed, and then wildly waved her hands in the air, as if to banish troubled thoughts from Nemaelle's pale head. The dwarf wasn't content until laughter bubbled out of the Princess, and then she dived partway over the log. "No birthday is complete without gifts, right?"

"Ugh, no, why?" Nemaelle's shoulders slumped.

Miharu guffawed, her booted feet swinging in the air as she continued reaching somewhere out of view. "To further embarrass you, obviously! First things first, get that ratty excuse for a cloak off of you."

The squirrel pulled the clasp of the light gray cloak free, and the birds lifted it away from the Princess' pale shoulders. She let it happen, though not without a grateful smile and a silently mouthed 'thank you.'

"Now, _this_... This is a cloak!" With a dramatic flourish, the dwarf whipped the fabric forward. Like with much dwarven finery, it was unlike anything to be seen, pristine white velvet woven from the fragile threads of silk gathered in the silkworm season, interwoven with so many tiny specks of something that grabbed the light and held it. Something like diamond, or perhaps something better than diamond. Something the remainder of the dwarven people wouldn't have wanted to share in the age of man's greed...

Nemaelle's mouth opened and closed as she stared.

"Looks great, huh, Fish Face?" Miharu grinned.

"... I can't wear that."

"You can, and you will...!" The dwarf said in sing-song tones, dragging it toward her.

"The bandits will steal it from me!"

"You have spent the past seven years hunted by ugly, morphing clumps of mirror, and you're worried about bandits." She wasn't buying it, snorting as she circled the Princess and draped it around her shoulders. Before Nemaelle could protest, the squirrel sat up from its spot in her lace-scrap lap and managed to grab the steel hook, dropping it into the hoop and closing the clasp together. "From the merry band of seven dwarves, to Her Highness the Princess and rightful ruler of Assiah."

Rightful ruler... But every year that passed, Nemaelle felt less and less like the rightful ruler. Seven years spent preparing innocent people for slaughter, followed by seven years hiding in the woods, scrambling through each day like a fugitive. Some ruler. Some Princess...

"Beautiful." Miharu sighed as she came around to view Nemaelle from the front. "A true snow maiden, you are. Too bad you're not a lower-earth dwarf, like Nyssa and Ruji. You'd put them all to shame!" She paused. "Don't tell them I said that."

The Princess smiled and bashfully laughed. "A little hard to tell that to dwarves I have yet to actually meet."

"One day...!" Miharu was sure of it. Nemaelle had certainly paid her dues, if Miharu had any say in it. Living off the land with her own snow-white hands for seven years... living _with_ the land. Surely Uriel would introduce himself to her soon, would take her under his wing. Not that he had wings. She supposed if Uriel did have wings, they'd be big and brown, though. "And you can introduce us to your handsome hunter friend."

Nemaelle's pale nose scrunched at the dwarf. "You're shameless."

"I'm a dwarf. We like pretty things; it's what we do!" Before Miharu could say more, her mouth was filled with a soft wad of snow that Nemaelle had thrown at her.

The girls spent their time together pelting each other with snow, laughing loudly, the gray squirrel scurrying into the safety of the Princess' hood... until some terrible scratching, grating sound rang out, like glass on glass. Nemaelle's instincts fired off sure and sharp, immediately pulling the crystal bow from where it usually rested at her shoulder, taking a shining arrow from the quiver at her back and drawing the bowstring back tight. She aimed for the treetops behind her, fevered blood pounding behind her startled red eyes. She waited.

"... False alarm, I think."

But the frightened Princess took her time to slowly relax, pointing the crystal arrowhead at the ground. Her silent sigh came out in a chilly puff of air that rose above her head, disappearing into the forest canopy.

Seven years of seeing her so on edge, even on her birthday – especially on her birthday – made the dwarf lose the mirth that she preferred to surround herself with. "You know that you're the only one who can put an end to this kind of life, Snowy."

"I know..." Nemaelle breathed, turning back around to face her red-cloaked friend. She kept her bow in hand, arrow still at the ready to be drawn and fired.

Miharu frowned, but she shook her head in an attempt to clear out the hurt she had for the Princess hiding in the forest. "Another gift!"

" _Another_ one? Miha, I think the shiny cloak is more than enough..."

"You hush; this gift is from me and me only!" Miharu's little hands waved at her, beckoning her to kneel in the snow. She pulled two charms from the pocket of her winter leggings, shining dwarven gold in the shape of snowflakes, dangling from woven red cord. The golden flakes were wide but thin as coins, holes cut into them in the shape of dwarven symbols. "Lesson time! Know what these say?"

Nemaelle held out the pale cream glove of her hand to receive one of the charms, running her thumb across the hollow words. "... Great... something... Friends." The dwarven language was at once both simple and complicated, words that stood for a multitude of similar concepts, all depending on the context. Years learning the language had made the Princess awkwardly knowledgeable... but she knew it was an honor to be taught the language at all. To even be in the presence of a hidden race such as theirs.

"Best."

"Best something Friends?" Her nose scrunched, but she laughed at the mischievous grin that curled upon the dwarf's lips.

"It's a colloquial bit of an expression that I don't know how to explain to you. I asked Uriel what a good direct translation to your human tongue would be and he flat-out refused to help."

"Oh God, now I'm not sure if I want to know what this thing says..." The Princess teased.

"It's not even that bad!" Miharu huffed. "Maybe a little vulgar, but it's no different than when men hit each other because they like each other and call each other bastards!"

"So this says 'Best Bastard Friends'?"

"Best, mmm... Best Damned Friends? Best Damn Friends."

"Best Fucking Friends?" Birds twittered around behind Nemaelle's head, as though in shock over her swearing.

Miharu pointed to her pale friend with wide, appreciative eyes. "Best Fuckin' Friends!"

The Princess let out a bright laugh. "Fuckin' thank you."

"You're fuckin' welcome!" The dwarf grinned and stepped forward, boots crunching in the snow. "Pick a place in your hair and I'll braid it in. I'll make you an honorary dwarf."

Snowy lashes fell over her eyes, gently dusting the tops of her cheeks as she pulled on a lock of hair growing from behind her ear. "Should a human be wearing a dwarven hair charm, Miha?"

The dwarf took that as all the sign that was needed to take Nemaelle's charm and begin braiding it into that lock. "You can if I say that you can. One day, you'll reign over all of Assiah, and I want people to know that's my best fuckin' friend on that throne, no matter how far away the palace is...!"

The charm was so light, Nemaelle could only barely feel the weight of it dropping from an inch behind her pale ear. "You'll always be my best friend, Miha. You know that." She hoped Miharu knew that. The Princess had no idea that the short, smiling creature that came into her life, urging her to keep her presence a secret with a wink, would become such a close friend. Ever since the age of seven, when her life had been flayed to bits by mirror shards, the idea of friendship seemed unreachable. How would she ever be able to express just how much their camaraderie saved her? "No matter how far away we are from each other."

Miharu's wide smile shrank ever so slightly. "That didn't feel like warm-hearted Snowy."

Nemaelle watched her dwarf friend braid her matching charm into the hair behind her own ear, a cloud of a breath leaving her sadly smiling lips. "You're always saying that you're so tired of me living in fear here, day in and day out..."

"But you're not going to face the Witch Queen."

"No..."

Miharu searched Nemaelle's face for some clue, and turned to look toward the north. "... You're leaving."

"I want to."

The dwarf frowned heavily. "To the Kingdom of Heaven?"

"Where else can I go? I can't go any other direction out of Assiah without leaving the forest. If I cross through the borderlands and out of the other side of the forest, I'm in Heaven."

"But... But why?" Dark brows pinched together. "I know you're so tired of that witch. This won't end until she dies."

"Miha..."

"It's the truth."

"I know it's the truth!" The Princess' cheeks turned pink with emotion, desperate words turning into icy puffs in the air. "But I can't. I'm one girl and she, she has a legion of glass-"

"You also have us...!" Miharu insisted. "I'm telling you right now, the whole of the forest will rise up with you if you-"

 _"No one's dying for me!"_

The birds had paused in their tweeting, and the squirrel popped its gray head out of the Princess' hood. Miharu's frown pulled hard on her lips, and the scarlet of her cloak fluttered as she turned and strode back over to the log, sitting upon it.

"No one... Nothing in this forest should die for me. That is exactly what will happen. I know what Azreal can do, better than anyone else. She'll turn everyone following me to ribbons, and swallow me up." Tears glinted in her eyes like ice. "For nothing."

"Not for nothing." Miharu spoke quietly. "For the rightful ruler."

The pinkness of Nemaelle's cheeks deepened into a frustrated red. "Maybe you can survive, and tell that to the trees and the gravestones."

Miharu's mouth opened wide to yell-

"She's right."

The Princess and the dwarf stood, cloaks gently rustling against themselves, Nemaelle's crystalline bowstring drawing back tightly.

"Peace, Princess. Peace." He was a dwarf; that much was certain. Nemaelle could tell from the way the metal upon his clothing had been worked perfectly around polished emeralds, as though woven instead of carved – skill that only a dwarf could have done. But he was tall for a dwarf, a few inches shorter than her shoulder, whereas the crown of Miharu's head only came to her hip.

"Uriel...!" Miharu's dark eyes had gone round with his presence. "Uriel, you need to talk to her. She's ready. She _has_ to be ready...!"

Eyes green as spring moss crinkled in the corners as he smiled at Miharu and shook his head, causing confusion to cross the faces of both women.

"Ready? I... Miharu, what-" Nemaelle stammered, and jumped when Uriel touched the arrow that still rested against the crystal bow.

"Almost," Uriel's voice held the kind of tenor that reminded the Princess of warm caves and cool rivers. "You're almost ready, Princess, but you lack the conviction."

The conversation carried forward too fast and too familiar for Nemaelle to adjust. Yes, Miharu had spoken to her of Uriel before, but she had never personally met him. He treated her as though he'd always spoken with her... "But... Ready? Ready for what?"

"Take back your throne." The words were deep and warm and encouraging... and final. He laughed, suddenly merry as he watched the crystal arrow drop into the snow. "But you are right. To do so now would be a suicide mission."

It was Miharu's turn to protest. "But Uriel-"

"Miharu means well, as always. But she has a reckless impulsiveness about her." He turned to give the dwarf girl a pointed stare, which only made her protest more.

"Is this about how I revealed myself too early? Because I'm not sorry about that."

For however much Uriel disapproved, he still smiled. Miharu made everyone smile. "Princess, you have the fate of Assiah in your hands. But you cannot claim your kingdom without understanding what that means, without the will to protect your birthright."

Nemaelle frowned as she gazed at the pair of dwarves. "... You speak too highly of me. I'm no Princess. Not anymore."

"That is why you must leave."

Miharu grabbed onto the heaviness of Uriel's dark gray cloak. "You can't!"

"I never could. It is her decision to make." Uriel bowed his head to Nemaelle, which only prompted Miharu to do the same, despite all friendship. "The fugitive Princess should taste the life of a free woman, and to do so she must cast off the royal claim, too. Go and see the world as it is meant to be, Snow. Know what you have been robbed of."

Nemaelle found herself stammering, "You're making it sound like I'll never return..."

"You better return!" Miharu snapped, her cheeks puffing out in a pout. "If you're not back here by next year, I'll bring you back myself!"

"Miharu." Uriel chastised her, albeit lightly, grasping her elbow. "Whether or not you return is your decision, Snow. But if I don't get a chance to see you before you leave, I have a gift for you."

"Wait, what?" Miharu's dark eyes blinked as Uriel briefly disappeared into the brush. "The cloak was our birthday gift to her, I thought."

"I can't show my face to the birthday girl and not physically give her something myself. It's rude." The brush rustled.

 _Another_ birthday gift? "Oh, no, please don't; I'm just happy to be _alive_ by this point-"

"And this will help you stay alive." He reappeared from the brush gripping the scabbard of a sword, full-length, perfect for Nemaelle to wield.

"I...!" Nemaelle's pale hands waved at the sword in refusal. "I already have a dagger...!" She patted her thigh, lifted the tattered, lacy layers of her knee-length skirt to show the tip of the dagger strapped to her leg. "And the bow-"

"I wouldn't suggest using a crystal bow in the general public. It's a little _too_ unorthodox. Even more so than the cloak. And the dagger is great, but a woman with a sword at her hip is to be respected."

She caught the sword as he tossed it to her, pulling it from the scabbard to see the almost mirror-like shine of dwarven steel. "I thought I was going to be safer in Heaven..."

"It's a better world out there, Snow." Uriel was soothing... but honest. "That doesn't mean it's without danger."

With a thoughtful pause, Nemaelle slipped her crystal bow over her shoulder and slashed the fresh blade through the air, listening to the singing whistle of the metal. "It's perfect..."

"My wife knows how to make a weapon."

She watched as Uriel's chest puffed up with pride, and a strange, urging pinch pricked upon her heart. She smiled. "Give her my thanks..." Nemaelle's voice raised, and her rose-red eyes turned to Miharu. "Thank you, truly..."

Miharu's arms crossed tighter around herself. "Seven years we've been watching you, Snowy... All of us." She paused, and hated the quiver in her words. She tried to blame the cold. "Please come back to us."

Nemaelle frowned. "I will visit. I have to. You're my best fuckin' friend, remember?" But she knew that wasn't quite enough, not to Miharu.

The dwarf girl grudgingly accepted her reassurance, however. "I'm accompanying you to the edge of the borderlands. You can't say no."

The Princess in the forest let out of soft laugh that the birds echoed. "I'd never say no to that!"

"We'll be waiting, Snow." Uriel gave her his tone of finality, firm as mountain rock, yet he smiled. "And while you're away, remember... Assiah deserves the same."

Her breath formed a chilly cloud before her face, and she gave him a nod before suddenly stabbing the sword into the snow, taking up her bow, and firing an arrow towards the trees above their heads. A terrible crash of crystal against mirror scratched at their ears, and the mirror-bird fell to useless pieces on the forest floor. As the dwarves' heads whipped back around to her, Nemaelle gave them an apologetic smile, and gathered up her sword to fasten it to the belt about her waist. "Not a false alarm, after all..."

The Princess' words sent a hurting frown across Miharu's face, but Uriel planted a gloved hand against the scarlet shoulder of her cloak and began guiding her away. Queen Azreal would surely send trouble to the resting place of the bird of shards... Seven years of fighting to stay hidden had taught them that all too well.

Yet still Nemaelle remembered to call out to them, "Tomorrow...!"

And Miharu called back in a moody sigh, "Heigh ho, heigh ho...!"

Of course, the dwarf girl was upset... and just after giving her such a gift. The Princess gathered up her old, plain gray cloak, folding it over in her arms, barely feeling the light swinging of the charm braided into her hair as she hurried off into the deeper, thicker parts of the forest. Even as the thoughts chased themselves around in her head, she was ever vigilant, eyes as sharp as cut rubies scanning the trees for shards of mirror. In an ideal world, she would have asked Miharu to come with her; the notion of heading into parts unknown all alone seemed daunting...

But they did not live in an ideal world. They never had, and Nemaelle had no way of knowing if Miharu would have been accepted among not only mankind, but the people of Heaven in particular. Maybe... maybe after a few months, after she'd tested what life in Heaven was like. Maybe then she could invite her? And maybe him, too... though she knew him far too well. She knew what his answer would be, but she didn't hold that against him.

She whistled out a call when her pale gray boots stepped into the small meadow they'd last decided to sleep at. Their campfire was still there, though put out, as was their ratty pile of blankets and more importantly, his plain wooden bow, with the quiver just beside it. He had to be near. She tried again, the same string of notes they had used to locate each other since she'd run free into the tangle of the woods.

He replied with the following set of notes, whistling with ink-black eyes rolling. He sucked some sticky syrup off of his finger before he replied, "Now that you're twenty one, do you think we could change our call to something shorter?"

Her lips pulled back into a teasing smile. "What's wrong, oppa? You don't like whistling about Princes?"

Jinho sighed and teased back, "What if one day this all catches up to you, and suddenly you've got a line of Princes stomping all over the forest?"

"I'd tell them to knock it off, because it's not their forest to stomp around in!" They laughed and embraced, Nemaelle playfully tugging on the wavy tail of dark hair at the nape of his neck.

"Happy birthday, Snow." It was only then that the Huntsman's smile faded, and he took a half step away, keeping his hold on her shoulders. "... Snow."

She took one look at herself, and immediately scrambled to come up with a lie. "I found it...!" It would have been better if she could have just told him the truth, if Miharu and the other dwarves weren't trying to keep as hidden as possible...

"You found this lying around in the woods?" Of course Jinho was skeptical.

She tried in vain to keep up the charade. "Yes."

"Who in their right mind would _leave_ this, Snow? Look at it...! It's fit for nobility...!" He lifted one edge of the cloak, watching the interwoven gems catch the bits of light filtering through the trees. "Is this from one of Azreal's merchant carriages?"

The Princess in the forest gave him a rude little snort. "Why wear shiny cloaks when you can wear crunched up bits of glass, oppa?"

But he had already moved on to the next discovery, unveiled when he'd pulled on the cloak. "Snow, a _sword?_ "

"It was with the cloak...!"

"Snow, you're a terrible liar."

"I'm not...!" Her pouted lip puffed out, but he merely prodded it.

"I thought we agreed that we weren't going to be bandits, anymore..." Jinho's eye caught the shine of gold, and by that point all he could do was sigh while touching the intricately carved snowflake.

"We did agree." And it had been by her own initiation, too, after hearing a merchant beg not for her mercy, but for her to spare him the Queen's wrath...

The Huntsman shook his head, but gave her a small smile. "An exception, this one time. Because it's your birthday."

Nemaelle hated how it was easier to believe she'd taken birthday gifts for herself from a merchant's carriage, and it pushed the beginnings of the truth out of her mouth. "All of this was given to me _willingly_."

"By who?"

The Princess faltered, paused, drew designs in the snowy forest floor with the toe of her boot.

"... Snow, who did you meet?"

"I can't tell you."

Jinho's dark eyes blinked as Nemaelle continued to fidget. "... You know that we can't keep secrets like this."

Yet she had kept the secret of the dwarves for several years, now...

"There are too many men out there swayed by those seventy pieces of gold Azreal keeps promising. How do you know these gifts aren't a ploy? What if there's mirror stuck somewhere on this cloak?" He eyed the sword again. "Let me see the blade."

She sighed and gently drew the sword from its sheath, and she mouthed his next words with eyes turned to the sky in exasperation.

"It looks like mirror!"

"It's _not_ mirror, oppa! I promise!"

"Did _they_ promise, too? You trust their promises?"

"Yes!"

Jinho drew his scarred hand down his face. "They could have been bought, Snow. All men can be bought. That's the human race, for you!"

"They're not human!" Her lips suddenly thinned into a tight line.

Ink-black eyes gave her an unreadable stare. "Snow, you need to tell me what's going on, right now."

"Oppa, please..." She begged quietly. "They're good people. They just don't trust humankind." A rueful smile crossed her face. "Kind of like how you don't."

Jinho drew a breath in through his nose, and he felt the cold bite at his sinuses. "Snow, first all this strangeness with the animals, and now you're... what? Talking to elves?"

Nemaelle's cheeks puffed out.

"... Elves are real?"

"Can we please not talk about this?"

"Then elves are real."

"Oh my God, oppa, I don't know!"

"Then you're not talking to elves. Dwarves?"

" _Oppa!_ " Her cry made birds tweet and fly off, disturbing the snow on barren branches, and causing the squirrel she'd been carrying in the hood of her cloak to scurry across her shoulder and leap down onto the forest floor.

The Huntsman waited for the rosiness of her cheeks to settle into a calmer pink before speaking again. "I want to discuss this."

"I know you do." She moaned to the toes of her boots.

He held out his hand, fingers curling around her soft glove and pulling her along with him. "I don't want to spoil your birthday, Snow... so hopefully this will help." He only guided her through a few low bushes before another, much smaller clearing opened up.

Nemaelle suddenly released his hand. "Oh... my... God."

A rare and wonderful grin formed on Jinho's lips. "I hope it looks good."

Oh, it looked good. He had told her that he was planning on something for her birthday, despite her protesting... Of course, Jinho would know that she would never reject a good apple. There were several, piled up like a pyramid, drizzled in some sugary glaze that Nemaelle realized he'd sucked off of his finger when he came to her.

"It's... kind of like a cake."

"It's better than a cake."

"It needs candles."

"It needs to be eaten...!" Immediately, the Princess stripped off her gloves, tucking them into her belt as her pale fingers wiggled and reached for the sticky sweet apples.

"Make a wish, first!" The Huntsman snapped playfully, and laughed when she groaned and shut her eyes for, perhaps, half a second.

Together, they ate a little more than half of the apple pyramid, though Nemaelle had consumed more than him. As they ate, she grudgingly gave up the secret of the dwarves, moaning between bites that she shouldn't have told him, she should've said nothing, she should have lied.

"Is it really so bad that I know about them?" He asked, taking his time with his apple.

Nemaelle had to chew through a large bite which had left a smear of sugary syrup at the corner of her mouth. "I mean... no? I don't think so." She took another bite. "I know that you're trustworthy; it's just a comfort thing for them, I think. I mean, I've only met one. Today I met another." Her little pink tongue flicked out to lick at the sugar glaze on her face.

"How many are there?"

Nemaelle had taken a too-large bite when he asked, so she held up seven fingers.

"Just seven?"

She shrugged. "Miha said they're a group of seven, yeah. I don't know if there are many more. They seem to like keeping to themselves... Except Miha. I get the feeling she's an anomaly."

"She's the one you've known the longest?"

"For... six years, now." The Princess admitted quietly.

She knew he would frown. "Snow..."

"She told me that Uriel didn't want their presence getting out; that they only wanted to work with me...! Whatever that means, because I'm not sure." But words about the fate of Assiah and taking the throne began to thrum in the back of her head...

"Uriel?"

"Miha says he's more or less the leader of their group. He showed up today; he's the one who gave me the sword."

Jinho shook his head, watching Nemaelle pick out little black seeds from the core of her apple and leave them in a pile in the snow. In moments, a doe had come to them, licking them up and swallowing them whole before playfully bumping the crown of the Princess' head with its muzzle. It had taken years for him to get used to how... abnormally friendly animals were, with her. "How were you able to keep this from me for so long, Snow?"

"Well it wasn't easy; I can tell you that!" Nemaelle grabbed yet another apple.

"You should probably slow down on the apples, there, Snow." The Huntsman warned with a short little laugh.

"Excuse you, oppa!" She retorted with a joking scoff, coming to a stand and throwing her arms out. Her boots crunched against the snowy ground as she marched back into the neighboring clearing. "It's my birthday. I'll eat as many apples as I want to-"

The smile on Jinho's face faded away as Nemaelle bit into her latest apple and then promptly collapsed, the apple rolling away from her fallen hand. "Snow...?" He was on his feet immediately, hurrying over to her. "Snow!"

She lay sprawled in the snow with her eyes shut... finally letting out a groan as one hand moved to rest over her stomach. "Ughhhhh... I think I moved too fast..."

The Huntsman's ink-black eyes suddenly crinkled shut in laughter. "I told you." He sat in the snow beside her, his shoulders still shaking in his amusement.

"Leave me here to die, oppa..."

He tapped her with his worn brown boot. "Not funny."

But the Princess laughed, anyway... or as well as she could, given the sudden aching of her stomach and the dizziness of her head. She opened her eyes to look at him, her other hand coming up to toy with the string of lace she used to lace her patchy bustier together. "Want to know what I wished for?"

"Don't the wishes need to be kept secret for them to come true?"

"This one probably won't come true, anyway."

Her reply caught his interest, his dark eyes shifting from the snow on the ground to her similarly-pale face.

"I wished that I would be truly free. In a small town, maybe... among people." She reached out, tapping at the toe of his boot. "I wished that you would be there, with me."

Just as she thought, he returned to staring at the ground instead of her, his lips thinning. "That sounds more like something you've already been planning for."

"But you won't come with me."

Jinho sighed quietly, frowning at her. "The forest is home, Snow. It's been home since I was seven years old..."

"I know... and it's been my home since I was fourteen. But there's so much more out there, oppa. Other kingdoms... Heaven is just across the borderlands. Maybe we would be safe from Azreal there. Maybe we could rest easier at night, and we wouldn't have to listen to that ugly mirror-shard sound ever again."

"What exactly do you think is out there, Snow...?" He shook his head. "What was I just telling you, earlier? Men can be bought. People are self-serving. I've had enough people take things from me and try to give me less than what my kills are worth... and that's all aside from Azreal and her seventy pieces of gold."

"I can't live that way, oppa..."

"What way? The cautious way?"

"The distrusting way..." Rose-red and ink-black eyes met each others' gazes. "The forest is home, but it's made us so... so paranoid, oppa. We have to be cautious because we're being hunted, but that's all... Azreal and her mirror-men and the nightmare all of that is. Yes. I know men beyond her can be bought. I know men beyond her could try to hurt us just... for their own agendas." Her fingers tapped on the Huntsman's boot. "But I can't live like that's every man out there. I just..." She blinked back the threat of tears.

"Snow..." Jinho took hold of her hand.

"I have to believe I can trust somebody who isn't living in this forest. I _have_ to."

They said nothing for a moment, their hands squeezed tightly together. They already knew how it was going to end. "... I'm sorry, Snow."

"Don't be. The way you are is valid. It's kept us alive for seven years, out here..."

"I can't go with you."

"I know. I don't want you to do anything that you don't feel is right for you. But..." She squeezed his scarred hand a little harder. "Stay safe. I'm not the only one Azreal is angry at."

Jinho nodded, his smile small and sad and apologetic. "When were you planning to go...?"

"I told Miha tomorrow."

That made his eyes widen. " _Tomorrow?_ In the middle of winter?"

"I've made it through all the other winters just fine..." Nemaelle shrugged. "And if I don't leave soon, I'm afraid I just... never will."

A fair enough reason, and he knew it. His sigh formed a cloud before his face. "... I'll keep you company up to the borderlands, okay?"

A sudden laugh erupted from the overfed Princess, followed by a small groan of aching pain. "Miha will be happy to hear that. She wants to meet you."

"Your dwarf friend wants to meet me...?"

"She thinks you're handsome." The way his face fell to a slightly shocked blankness made another achy laugh build in her belly. "She won't try anything funny; she's not forceful like that. She just likes admiring pretty things. She says it's a dwarf thing, but I don't know how true that is. Uriel didn't ogle me and call me beautiful, so..." Realizing her verbal train of thought wasn't helping, she released his hand to tap the toe of his boot again. "She's harmless, oppa! You'll see when you meet her. She's great. I promise."

Jinho's dark eyes rolled toward the sky. "If you say-" The rest of the words caught in his throat and promptly morphed into a short string of surprised swearing in the tongue his father had preferred, suddenly scrambling for his bow. "Snow!" He called as he began shooting arrow after arrow at the floating mass of mirror shards. "Hurry!"

His aim was true each time, but it only stalled the glass, making the pieces pause and scatter before regrouping. Only Nemaelle's crystal arrow could instantly kill the deadly-sharp cloud, breaking it into a useless rain of mirror.

Useless... which caused Queen Azreal to let out a shrill scream of frustration. Seven years of chasing and losing them...!

She had gotten used to the temporary blindness that occurred with the death of every mirror-shard scavenger, stumbling back into her mirror room.

"She could have been dead by now! Both of them!" She hissed, and vision returned to her silver-star eyes by the time she reached her floating map.

Azreal said that every day, multiple times a day, and it sent a pang of guilt through her brother. "Dear sister..."

"Silence!" Little slivers of glass slipped across the floating map and stopped in the last spot she could confirm seeing them.

"Please. Allow me to send some of the townsmen out there. They'll be happy to be closer to those seventy gold pieces..."

"They won't make it there in time."

Ezekiel's nostrils flared, his mouth running faster than his brain. "Neither will your glass!"

Azreal ran through the translucent, airy map and struck him hard across his cheek, along the three scars left there from seven years ago. "Get out."

Ezekiel frowned. "Sister-"

"Get. _Out!_ "

"You're exhausted; _look_ at you!" He yelled over her manic, straining words. "You need to conserve your energy. Let me send out one of my groups."

"They won't be able to get to her in time. She's _leaving_. She wants to make a break for Heaven. I have to get her _tonight!_ "

His aqua eyes gave her an incredulous stare. "That's not going to happen, whether it's my men or your glass. They're already near the borderlands and they hide away fast."

"Oh, then what is your brilliant plan _this_ time?"

The sting of how his first plan failed struck like lightning in his heart. "Let's focus on the Huntsman. Kill him for his betrayal-"

"I couldn't care less for that ridiculous Huntsman! Both you and My _useless_ Heart gave me warnings about a coup? _Let him!_ Let him try! His heart won't make me the most fair. Snow's will! And _then_ I will eat that worthless Huntsman for supper!"

"But you just said she's running for Heaven!"

"Then let's go back to Heaven, hmm?" Her fevered anger turned and directed itself at Her Heart in the magic mirror, piercing him as he stared back with the same carefully blank face. "Let's go home. You want to talk about a coup? I'll kill your father _and_ your brother! Would you like that, My Heart?"

"Not particularly, My Queen."

Azreal's fingers formed claws around the mirror's frame, silver-star eyes burning into chilly steel ones. "It's what you _deserve._ "

"Azreal, please. Look at yourself. You wouldn't be able to drag an army from here all the way to Heaven." Ezekiel hoped to get through to his struggling sister. "I think that you need to ask yourself..."

"What?" She delivered a shaky glare, fragile in all her rage. "What should I ask myself?"

"... Is the pale little brat worth all of this?"

Azreal's eyes widened into something deadly-sharp as the shards of tinted-red mirror littering her flowing gown.

"You are Queen of Assiah, dear sister...!" Ezekiel tried to reassure her. "The day will come when you can take Heaven, too, and perhaps more. Perhaps the whole world. When we capture the brat along the way, then you will have your immortality, your forever youth...! But now you must rest... Let the girl play house in Heaven for a while."

She began screaming. Wordless, raging, unforgiving, sending glass slivers at her brother until he escaped the mirror room and quickly shut the door behind him.

It was only then when the screams turned into words. "You were supposed to help me!" She pointed at Her Heart. "How _dare_ you? How _dare_ you, after everything I've done for you? How _dare_ you?"

As always, his reply was even and cool. "I am only ever honest with you, My Queen."

"Let me be honest with you, My Heart!" Her palms planted on the glass, over his chest. "When this is over, I have half a mind to throw you off the balcony and _kill_ you. How does that make you feel, My Heart?"

"Is that what My Queen wants?"

" _Yes._ " She threw the heavy velvet cover over him before slumping to the floor. It took releasing her hold over a mirror-man in the room with her, letting it crumple into shards trapped in leathery skin, to keep from losing consciousness.


	8. Haunted

**Queen of Mirrors, Queen of Arrows  
** _Haunted  
_ By: Brenli

The edge of the borderlands wasn't distinguishable by anything other than a thinning of forest foliage, a lack of trees that left a strip of flat land just wide enough for a carriage. Three stood at that edge - the Princess, her Huntsman, and the cheerful little dwarf who had lost a level of that cheer. "You're not even taking the cloak we _just_ gave you."

"Oppa's right, Miha. I can't bring it to Heaven. It'll attract too much attention."

"Let it. Everyone should see how grand you are when you pass them."

"Miha..." Nemaelle sighed and knelt before the dwarf in her plain gray cloak. "I'm sorry."

Only a short pause later, Miharu's shoulders drooped beneath her own cloak of scarlet. "Don't be, don't be... I get it." She smiled, though her dark eyes were still soft in their sadness. "I'll just miss you. That's all."

Pale arms embraced the dwarf, holding her tight before pulling away and standing. "I told you, Miha; I'll visit. Best fuckin' friends, right?"

The little dwarf said nothing, merely tapping the golden snowflake forward to let it catch the light, her grin widening.

Nemaelle mimicked her, the matching charm swinging forward and glinting under the brightness of winter daylight. When she hugged the Huntsman, he lifted her and refused to put her down until her pale gray boots began frantically kicking about. "Oppa!" She cried when he set her down, smacking his arm. "You're ruining my goodbyes!"

"Sorry." But the smile he wore said otherwise. "It's going to be dull without you, Snow..."

"Maybe Miha can help fill the void?"

"I'd be more than happy to!" The dwarf exclaimed, suddenly beaming and sunny as she looked up at the Huntsman. She merely laughed at the awkward little grin he gave her, landing a soft punch to his forearm. "Really though. You're good with Snowy so you're good with us. Give it a little bit and the others will come around, especially if I keep reminding them you're Snowy's childhood friend."

The Princess laughed. "Maybe you'll meet all seven before me, oppa."

Miharu nodded. "Yeah, really, seeing as _someone_ wants to go off adventuring in Heaven."

"Is it really an adventure if all I'm trying to do is... live?"

"Even worse, then!"

But the girls laughed through the pain of leaving. Even though it had been Nemaelle's own idea, as she stood in the strip of land just before the borderlands, she felt the sadness of missing them. Missing the dwarf who kept her head up. Missing the boy who'd been with her since even before the death of their fathers and their childhoods and their much more perfect lives. What was she going to do without them...?

She would have to find out, and she steeled herself with a nod, beginning to take steps backwards. "... I'll cover you guys while you leave?" She drew a crystal arrow from her quiver.

"You better keep those hidden." Jinho cautioned.

"I will when I'm done covering you!" Her pouting made the other two laugh.

But there was nothing, no mirror-birds or mirror-clouds or mirror-anything... They said goodbye and goodbye and goodbye to each other, until Nemaelle felt the brushing of bushes at the backs of her knees, until Jinho and the grinning Miharu turned their backs toward the Princess. She smiled wide and nearly let out a laugh when the dwarf gave her a playful wink over her red-cloaked shoulder, mouthing an 'oh yes!' while jerking her head toward the oblivious Huntsman.

Poor, poor Jinho. He was going to be rather flustered for a while, Nemaelle just knew it. She sighed and slipped the unused arrow back into her quiver and stalled by pointlessly feeling for how many were there. Only three...

Yet it didn't matter. Why was she stupidly groping at her arrows? After she used those three, they would all come back anyway, forming out of thin air... She took her time putting her crystal bow over her shoulder, checking on her dagger, checking on her sword-

"Nemaelle."

Like any other time she was taken by surprise, the Princess immediately readied her bow for a shot. She didn't see anyone or anything, and it wasn't until her heartbeat slowed back down that she realized she'd been called by her birth name. Very rare...

A shiver ran through her from head to boot-covered toe. She couldn't be so paranoid once she was in Heaven; it would only make her stand out more. At the very least, she needed to get rid of the compulsion to reach for her bow... or else disguise it somehow. Cover it with something. Paint it. Oh, but paint would make it feel so awkward in her hands, and if she painted the arrows too – and she would have to paint the arrows too, lest they draw attention – wouldn't that affect her accuracy, even if only the slightest bit when the painted shafts scraped by-

"Nemaelle."

The compulsion was far from under control. She had an arrow at the ready without even thinking to go for the sword instead. "... Azreal?" She aimed at nothing. The bushes, the treetops, the sky. There was nothing. Fear pinched even more sharply at her when she turned and began aimlessly pointing the arrowhead across her view of the borderlands. Would Azreal's power stretch that far? Could she hunt the fugitive Princess through the open territory that was the borderlands?

Her worry pushed a whistle out of her mouth, the familiar old tune. God, she wouldn't have minded a Prince coming right about now. Just so that she didn't have to be alone for her journey... but it was a silly sentiment, and she knew it, after so many years. Yet still she whistled, and remembered how the Queen's brother seemed to enjoy mocking her for it. Wasn't he late, wasn't he late? Yes, he was late. He was fourteen years late.

She still whistled.

Two more times during her first day of travel, she heard the voice, speaking her birth name, and each time had sent her whistling harder and aiming at nothing, first with the bow, and then with the sword. Nemaelle tried to console herself by walking with the blade brandished, but it only helped marginally...

And then the sun set, and the Princess in the forest realized that she really, _really_ hadn't thought this through. She was going to have to sleep alone. It was easy to get excited about sleeping alone when the daydreams involved warm, soft beds in quaint little village inns... but in the forest?

But the borderlands weren't the forest of Assiah, they weren't. Right? And therefore they should be at least a little safer? Maybe... maybe she could just... not sleep. Just keep forging her path. So long as she stayed vigilant, she wouldn't veer off track -

"Nemaelle."

This time the strange voice seemed to come from just behind her, whispering into her ear, which only made the Princess' reaction that much more violent. A nervous and panicky cry escaped her when she turned and slashed, the immaculate dwarven steel singing against the air. She thought that she caught the flash of white on the nearly mirror-like blade, but it might have been light. Whatever little bits of light that thrived on in the dark.

She felt like she was seven and stupid and scared and entirely too lonely. Was Heaven worth the way she wanted to curl up into a sad ball of sewn together bits of lace and silk? The winter air made a tear nearly freeze upon her face. She couldn't make the journey. She had made a mistake.

"Don't cry."

Two words, even less syllables than her birth name, but it set the Princess off. No longer was she shaking and whimpering. Her sword slashed at nothing and her boots pushed hard and fast through the snow, and she screamed the way she imagined a banshee might scream. A horrible wail in the night that might hopefully frighten whatever was stalking her more than it had frightened herself...

In the middle of the panic, she had forgotten to keep track of where she was going. The realization that she was now lost, on top of being followed by something, made the banshee-like wailing morph into desperate weeping, and then she tripped. She tumbled so far down that her vision swam, and continued swimming when her body unceremoniously slammed against the trunk of a tree, sending snow over her. The Princess sat upon the chilly forest floor and let out an open sob. What was she thinking...?

"Are you hurt?"

"Get away from me!" Nemaelle's sword pointed firmly at the figure she finally saw in full. Tall, wearing a thin, pale gown, with a chilling white mask. Chilling because it had no real expression. Neither cruel nor kind...

"You need help." That was the final confirmation that Nemaelle had been haunted by the sorceress in the borderlands since the beginning of her travels.

But she remembered the warnings about her. "No. I'm fine." Her words came forth in a stressed wheeze.

"It does not seem that way, from here."

"I said that I'm fine."

"At least let me help you stand."

"No!" Nemaelle snapped as she scrambled back onto her feet. "I don't need anything from you. Thank you for your concern. Be on your way."

As she began to slip and stumble her way back up the snowy slope, hoping to retrace her steps, she heard the sorceress laugh a low chuckle. It seemed sinister from behind her mask, or maybe that was only the Princess' fear feeding into her perception... "Oh, Nemaelle... as cold as the snows of winter. Your nickname is well-earned, isn't it?"

Nemaelle caught herself against the slope, digging her gloved fingers into the icy white ground, using the sword to help her stand again.

Yet even ignoring the sorceress did not help her. Hours passed in the dark of the winter's night. The Princess traced manic steps in the snow back to the point where she'd started running, and she looked up to read whatever stars she could see from between the mess of barren tree branches.

The sorceress sat in those branches, her long skirt gently catching in the wind. "I could guide you to out of these borderlands, if you desired it."

"I know how to navigate." Already she changed her route.

"I could help you stay fed. Warm."

"I know how to hunt. I'll stay warm if I keep moving."

"Protect you, perhaps."

The sorceress' voice came from too close again, from behind her, just beside her ear, and it made Nemaelle spin and point the sword at her. Dawn had come upon them, shining off the blade in brilliant shades of blue.

"Watch over you as you rest." The sorceress offered.

Nemaelle's eyes were as hard as red winter berries trapped in ice. "I have rejected your help! Are you always this persistent?"

The sorceress shook her masked head, twisted locks of ivory hair slipping over her shoulders. "I have a vested interest in you, Nemaelle."

They stood facing each other for moments that crawled on slowly, and a cloud of worried breath formed before her face. "... Why?"

The mask tilted to one side. "One who has benefited from me has returned."

Too cryptic. "I'm afraid it doesn't feel like much of a reunion for me. I was too young. Sorry."

The sorceress merely nodded, a small bow of her head, and she was gone...

Only to suddenly speak from behind Nemaelle's pale ear, several hours later. "You haven't eaten any."

Seven years of keeping a keen eye and ear on her surroundings couldn't prepare her for the magic of the sorceress, and that fact frightened her all the more, causing her to snap and slash the blade of her permanently-brandished sword through the sorceress' middle.

It meant nothing, making the Princess' fear spike. It literally meant nothing. There was no blood, no gaping wound. So many years of viewing gore made that expectation as easy to handle as cooking and eating dinner... The nothingness shook her much more deeply, and made her move faster on her way through the borderlands.

"Why haven't you eaten any?"

"I _have_ been!" True enough that the meager portions of jerky and roasted nuts and dried berries were almost gone – the price to pay for not stopping to hunt – but she had been eating during her exhausting journey. More exhausting than Nemaelle anticipated... she wasn't sure that she would be getting any sleep until she'd crossed over into the forest of Heaven. Not with the sorceress haunting her through the borderlands.

"Oh, not that foodstuff you have with you. That feeds the body; it does not feed you."

Fatigue wore the Princess' patience so very thin. "If you're giving me riddles, I don't want to play! I just want to get to Heaven; just leave me alone so I can get to Heaven!"

"But why have you not eaten any?"

"Any _what?_ "

"Hearts."

A thousand horrible memories of holding up platters with tidily-cut arrangements of that organ flashed through Nemaelle's head. Her mind screamed and wept and begged to run, but sleepiness made her legs turn to lead, stuck in the snow. "You have me confused with someone else..."

"Do I?"

"Yes." She blinked, long and lazy. The sorceress was suddenly just before her, and she held out her sword again. "Somebody who has no issue with eating hearts. She's had several."

"How many?"

Her snowy brows pinched together. "More than I care to count."

"And you've had none."

"And I'm proud of it." She grumbled and realized that she'd moved straight through the sorceress' body. She kept going.

"Then she will eat your heart, in the end."

"Thank you for the vote of confidence!"

The sorceress followed the Princess, disappearing and reappearing between trees. "You could eat hers."

"Why?" She took another pause in her travels, and saw the sunset flashing off of her blade. Nemaelle had become too tired to gauge time. "Why is that the answer? Kill the Witch Queen! Slaughter her like she slaughtered so many others! But the moment I do that is the moment I become like her. I don't want it!"

"Oh, but why not? It is the fate of every soul touched by me to succumb or conquer." The sorceress watched the sinking sun play off of the Princess' bleary eyes like blood. "So many before the one with sorrow-blue hair succumbed. Only she has chosen to conquer." Pale fingers tipped in pink from the cold reached out to Nemaelle. "Why not the one with the rage-red eyes? She wants to eat your heart. You must eat hers first in order to conquer."

The sword shook in the cream glove covering her hand. "Conquer... And that means what? Surviving?"

"Surviving... forever. Beautiful and powerful, forever." The masked head tilted, and Nemaelle took it for her version of a smile. "The sorceress in Assiah."

The Princess had become so tired, so worn down that the fabric of her composure shredded apart. She ran. She ran, and she knew she would spend all night running, again...

"Nemaelle."

"I don't want it!" She wept and wailed and roared as the last of the sun left. "I don't want to conquer or succumb! I don't want that fate!"

"And all the same, Nemaelle, it is the path you are on. You have been on that path since you were but a baby, when you lived through the winter of your birth instead of perishing in the cold."

"I never asked you to save me!"

"Of course not." The sorceress gave a scoff from behind the mask. "Your father asked, on your behalf. The bow, the warm coat... all for you to live, and to succumb or conquer."

The moon shone high in the sky, and played off the snowy-pale strands of hair that flowed in an arc as the Princess turned and screamed, roaring out violently against the sorceress, attacking with her sword despite its pointlessness. "I was a _child!_ Not even one day old and you put all this on me! How dare you; how _could_ you?"

"How dare I?" The sorceress spoke from behind her and allowed her to continue striking, calmly moving through the chilly, dark woods. "It was your father who wanted to play with fate. It is the weakness of humanity, to want your lives turned in a different direction, in a direction that suits you. Yet you think there can be no balance against this."

Fear and dismay bloomed like thorny roses within her when she realized she wanted to see blood upon the snow; she wanted the sorceress dead at her gray boots. "I didn't ask for anything! _Anything!_ My father did! You're making me carry the burden _he_ asked for!"

"He has paid for his request." The sorceress let the shock and the hurt play across the Princess' face. "God gave him wings when he died, so that he can fly out from Paradise and watch whether you shall succumb or conquer."

Nemaelle's boots crunched in the snow as she took step after backwards step, her head slowly shaking, sheathing her sword. The sorceress advanced, careful and gentle, as though her movements were meant to be a balm for all of the Princess' pain. "You should have let me die..."

"You have so many flying out to watch over you, Nemaelle."

She grabbed her crystal bow, drew back an arrow gleaming in the moonlight. "You should have let me die."

"Will they watch you conquer?"

"You should have let me die!" She let an arrow fly through the sorceress.

"Whose heart will be eaten?"

" _No one's!_ You should have let me _die!_ " Another arrow shot through bloodlessly, leaving no wound behind, and then another, and then Nemaelle was out of arrows. The faint flash of light from behind her let her know that all seven were back in the quiver once she'd turned to flee, but the white mask took up her vision, made her pause.

"A heart must be eaten."

Disgusted anger made Nemaelle's nostrils flare in the cold, a puff of breath forming between them. "I'm not eating Azreal's heart. I'm not letting her eat mine."

The sorceress' laugh was too empty to tell if it was happy or sad or angry. "And still, a heart could be eaten." She straightened her back and slowly began to raise a hand, resting it over her chest. "Though it requires a certain... determination." Fingers curled as though to pull aside the edge of a coat, and she pulled her skin open, only to reveal more skin beneath... and the wound, the gaping hole that simultaneously spilled blood and drew blood back into itself. An endless loop of bleeding out and in.

Nemaelle noticed the beginning of dawn illuminating the wound, the utter lack of heart. How long had she been staring at that hole in the sorceress' chest...? She was too tired to know.

The masked head tilted. "You are at the edge of the forest of Heaven."

Heaven... Her sanctuary, and she hadn't even stepped foot there, yet. She wasted no time in rectifying that, stepping around the sorceress despite being aware that she could move straight through her. That would have meant stepping through that gaping hole, the wound the Princess wanted no part of...

"Nemaelle."

Despite two days of torturous haunting, her boots crunched to a stop in the snow, bewildered and tired eyes peering into the forest before her.

The sorceress whistled. Only softly muffled, the notes were familiar and comforting. The call Jinho used with her. The song from her music box, masking the sound of glass on glass...

Nemaelle hurried into the safety of Heaven's forest, fighting down a scream.


	9. Someday My Prince Will Come

**Queen of Mirrors, Queen of Arrows  
** _Someday My Prince Will Come  
_ By: Brenli

Her broom swept along in time with merry whistles, and she thought she heard the call of birds mimicking her. Opening the windows to the tavern confirmed that for her, a trio twittering away as the light shone upon the canary yellow skirt, the cobalt bodice, the scarlet sleeves that belled out from her elbows and kept slipping off her shoulders, despite her efforts to adjust them. Nemaelle couldn't complain. It was the only 'proper dress' to her name, generous donations from the first family to take her in. Though she still struggled to understand what had been wrong with the dress she now had to refer to as... undergarments.

Had she really spent seven years running about the forest in undergarments? She didn't feel like she had. Jinho never said so, and she felt that he would have. In any case, beggars couldn't be choosers...

Well, she was no beggar, not anymore. Struggling, yes, but no beggar. And sure, the months had been hard, but winter gave way to spring, and she found herself in the heart of the royal capital! She would do well in the tavern and earn her keep, and when she was finally settled in with a little cottage of her own, maybe...

Ah, but she couldn't get ahead of herself, right? Just the previous night, she'd been reprimanded for giving out leftover bits of food to some stray dogs, and she intended to make up for it by setting up the tavern bright and early. Despite working herself so hard, she smiled while sweeping the dust out through the back door, and only took a moment to swipe her red sleeve across her pale forehead. Though she'd tied a crimson handkerchief about her head, up from under her hair and secured right at the top with a knotted bow, little beads of sweat dotted her brow, already. It was only early spring, but it seemed that a fiery hot summer was in order, that year.

All the more reason to get a nice cool draft going through the tavern early...! She hurried back in on her gray boots, whistling with the birds as she quickly flipped down chairs and bar stools, took a wet rag and gave the bar another good wipe down.

Nemaelle smiled and gave a satisfied nod as she rinsed her hands off in the nearby washbowl and dried them on her apron before tying it on. The tavern's few upstairs rooms were full of guests; maybe she could wake them with the welcoming scent of food...? She didn't want to brag, but over the couple months moving from villages to towns to finally, the capital, she'd learned how to bake a decent pie! The sweet smell of baking cherries, gooseberries, and apples soon wafted out of every open window, and she clapped and brushed the flour off her hands. A squirrel that had settled in the nearest window back in the tiny kitchen sneezed from the cloud of powder, nearly sending it off the ledge and spurring a laugh from her lips.

A laugh that choked on itself upon the sound of screaming from upstairs.

She gasped and hurried out of the kitchen, still wearing her apron, and her heart sank the moment she reached the source of the screaming. An angry patron stomped madly at the floor as his wife wept upon the bed, trying to stamp out the life of several mice. "Wait! Wait, wait! Stop!" Before Nemaelle knew what she was doing, she had shoved the moody man straight into his wife, knocking both of them onto their bed.

" _Sara!_ " The owner of the tavern, only just barely awake, snapped her alias at her as the mice scurried past him. "What are you _doing?_ "

She didn't know how to begin, because she knew that nothing she said would please the tavern owner, let alone make sense to him... So when he pointed back down the stairs, she went without protest.

He didn't take long to follow her, stopping her by the bar after the patrons above them shut their door. "What was that?"

Heat turned her pale cheeks bright pink, but she didn't know what to tell him, aside from the truth. "He was trying to crush mice."

"So? They're _mice!_ There shouldn't be any in here, to begin with!"

And Nemaelle knew that. "But they-"

"But nothing!" The tavern owner pressed frustrated fingers to his temple, still clad in only his sleeping clothes. "I don't understand it. We didn't have a mouse problem all winter. Why are they coming in here, now?" His eyes turned hard and accusatory.

Nemaelle saw where the conversation was going, and nervously readjusted her red top as it tried to slip down her pale shoulder. "I didn't let them in..."

"Well, you're clearly defending them."

"They didn't do anything to warrant getting stepped on!"

"They don't have to! Have you been living under a rock before you came to the city, Sara? Rodents carry plague!"

"Those mice weren't!" Nemaelle cried out, gesturing helplessly. "They were perfectly healthy!"

"Oh? You can tell that?" The tavern owner sneered.

Her temper made her spit out, "Can't you?"

For a long, uncomfortable moment, all they did was stare at each other. Nemaelle began to mentally steel herself for the worst...

"Something's burning!"

Not what she had been expecting to hear, but she turned her head to see the beginnings of little plumes of smoke escaping from the kitchen, slowly spreading outward to the bar. "... My pies!" She planted her pale hand on the bar and leapt over it, her yellow skirt and her red bell-shaped sleeves fanning out behind her as she ran to the oven. She was in too much of a hurry to search for mitts, and resorted to peeling her apron off and using that to quickly yank out the large tray and dump it onto the nearest clear surface. The scent of burnt dough overpowered the initial sweetness of the fruits within, and the smoke made her cough and fan her apron about the room in some attempt to clear the kitchen.

"Dammit, Sara!" The tavern owner cursed when his eyes peered through the smoke and caught sight of more than mice. Squirrels and birds and rabbits and even a small fox, in the time it had taken for the pies to burn, had slipped in through the windows and gotten into everything, taking morsels of food.

Nemaelle's eyes were wide red circles in her distraught face, but she didn't reach her breaking point until she heard the hard thunk of a rolling pin against the cupboards and counters, attempting to deal damage to the animals. "No, stop! Stop!" She screamed louder and louder still, recklessly risking a blow as she blocked the tavern owner's path and began to wrestle the rolling pin from his hand.

As soon as she'd taken the pin from him, he struck her hard across her face. "Get your things! You're out of here!"

She heard gasping from out beyond the bar, and she glanced through the gap between where she stood and where the small group of tavern patrons had gathered, no doubt hearing all the yelling and smelling the ruined pies. "I'm sorry..."

"That doesn't change the fact that your fuzzy friends are _infesting_ my tavern!"

"Please..." But she didn't know what to say.

"Get your things!"

"No, please...! I need this job! I'm new to the city; I don't have any money..."

"Tough, _Princess!_ " He pointed a shaking finger out past the bar. "I want you out!"

She stood before him with her cheek stinging red, sadly wringing the rolling pin in her hands.

" _Today, Sara!_ "

The third job that month, lost... Her snowy lashes fell over her eyes, but she nodded and put the rolling pin back on the counter, next to her burnt pies. The trip to the small room set aside for her was painful, averting her gaze, mumbling a soft, "Excuse me..."

The patrons gave her a wide berth, at least. But that was also often a bad sign. People would be talking about what occurred, here... was the city large enough that she could find work in a different part of it before everyone shut her out?

Nemaelle didn't have much in her possession. Winter gloves and leggings, her cloak, the sword, and her bow... the dagger was still strapped to her thigh. That was all she had. Weapons and clothes.

She tried hard not to think about how she was going to eat that day, stepping out into the cobblestone street and making small adjustments to herself, making the sword sit comfortably at her hip, shrugging the covered quiver, the bow, the tied-up bundle of clothing over her shoulder before she set out into the city, just as penniless as she had been when she first showed up, a week ago.

The worst part was that for all her trouble, Heaven was... nice. At least, to her it seemed nice. There were some downtrodden folk, but so many happy ones... Sweet little families, content with modest lives in sweet little cottages. None of them worried about being taken into a palace and murdered and eaten... She was astonished, and disgusted that she was astonished, because it showed her just how removed she was from them. From that life.

The animals slowly appeared again, first the tweeting of birds, then the scurrying of those little mice, and she wondered... was it too late, for her? She looked around and she agreed. Assiah needed a life more Heaven's. Freer. Less worried. No tight grip of Azreal's needy hand... But it wasn't something she fit into. She had tried. Oh God, she had tried, cooking and cleaning to earn a roof over her head, but the animals always flocked around her, and it frightened the people enough to want her gone... The villages on the fringes of the country were probably the worst. They were quick to label her a witch, despite all her insistence against it. Witchhunts were no easy thing to escape from.

Even when she tried to shoo the animals away, they came back. They never used to be so stubborn; they'd leave on the rare occasion she waved them off. Once she'd set foot in Heaven, though... in a way, they seemed rowdy. Pushy. _Pushing._ Toward what, she wasn't sure, but it had been them who helped her to hide when she needed it, and it had been them who took her from villages to towns to the capital...

Her feet slowly came to a halt, and she looked up. In the distance, up a winding path that curled about gentle, lush green hills, stood Heaven's royal palace. It seemed close, though it was a bit far off... that was how big and grand it was. Larger than her own palace in Assiah, and the gilded golden accents all about it shone bright against perfectly white stone... She couldn't begin to imagine how much it must have cost to construct such a place, not to mention the upkeep. Dirt showed up all too easily against white stone. She pitied the people who undoubtedly had to wash down the palace regularly. A King lived there, didn't he? An old King and a Prince. Lucky family, to still have what was theirs, to not be robbed and stuck on the outside, looking in...

Some upset pinch against her heart made her wince and turn away, and she nearly stumbled over a pair of rabbits and that group of mice. It took stumbling one more time to realize they were trying to block her path... and she'd had enough. God, she loved her animal companions, but it was too much.

"Haven't you done enough?" Nemaelle snapped, pulling the red handkerchief off her head and moodily throwing it to the ground. "This isn't what I came here, for! If I'd known you were going to make me lose _every_ job I've ever had, I never would have left!"

She tried to step around them. They moved into her path, again.

"What are you trying to do?" Her voice raised higher. "Take me to the _palace_ , next? What makes you think I'd even get through the gate?" She caught the sight of people slowing and staring at her, and she couldn't help yelling, " _Quit staring at me!_ "

As soon as she'd spat out her angry words, she regretted them, and she heaved a heavy sigh as she sat down on the street corner where the animals had blocked her off. People stepped around her as she drew her knees up to her chest and rested her elbows on them, her hands brushing into the snowy-pale hair at the crown of her head.

It wasn't a bad world, necessarily. It just wasn't one in which she stood a chance of functioning. Maybe she should go back to Jinho and Miharu, though a couple months was no huge amount of time to try and live in a new place. Maybe she should go home...

The thought made her open her sad eyes, remembering the sorceress who had nearly driven her mad, in the borderlands. Would the sorceress haunt her again, if she tried to return?

As the mice scurried behind nearby crates in search of food, and the squirrel buried itself into her bundle of clothing, she hung her head, cupped hands dropping outward in helplessness. "I never should have left..."

The fugitive Princess felt the weight of coins tossed into her hands, and when she lifted her head to stare at what she'd received, she gasped. Gold... and not only that. Three. Three gold coins! That would keep her covered for food today, at least – three whole meals, and maybe a night at an inn. A day's worth of time, saved...!

She looked up to thank the generous person and found he had already mostly passed her, riding on a horse unlike any she had ever beheld. All the detailed finery on the saddle and the reins that marked it as a royal steed wasn't necessary; the horse itself had a coat that literally gleamed under the light of the spring morning sun, flashing white against the cream coat like pale gold. She only saw the rider from behind, his jacket a rich blue velvet with a deep scarlet at the collar, and intricate, jeweled knotted cord in the same red sewn into the shoulders. The cord's tassels swayed from the horse's casual gait, while the light played off the fiery highlights in the man's red hair and the golden pieces worked into the jacket... Such a jacket, Nemaelle had never seen before. Her father, Kira and the other courtiers only ever wore brocaded doublets with elaborate clasps and heavy livery chains. To have all that shining embellishment sewn right into each jacket, though... that had to have been costly. How rich _was_ Heaven? Was Assiah ever so rich, before Azreal had come and killed the entire court...? She wished she could remember. It was buried under too much blood.

Her thoughts, both admiring and wondering, came to an abrupt halt when the nobleman looked over his shoulder. He seemed as surprised as she was, eyes briefly widening. Were they blue or green? She couldn't tell from where she sat, and the question faded as soon as he smiled. It wasn't reserved or regal, spreading wide across his youthful face, and he brought his fingers to his forehead in some kind of small, regarding gesture, as though tipping an imaginary hat to her.

Nemaelle remembered herself, pale lashes fluttering as she blinked rapidly and dipped her head in a small bow. Heat touched her face when she looked up again to find he was still smiling at her. But his attentions were finally diverted, looking forward and speaking to the golden-haired nobleman who rode beside him on a horse whose coat didn't gleam in the sun. Someone of lower rank than the man who had shown her kindness in coins and a smile... only then did she realize she must have been given alms from the Prince of Heaven himself.

The Prince's arms were busy, and she assumed he must have been fiddling with something he'd pulled from a velvet satchel dangling from his steed's side. He held the object out toward the golden-haired nobleman beside him and lifted the lid...

The notes were unmistakable, as was the telltale, rare choice of white velvet for the inner lining. A million memories flashed through her head of listening to that tune to soothe her to sleep, first as idle pleasure, but later on, after age seven, as a crutch to keep her sane. Her music box.

How did her music box end up in Heaven? A horrible shredding feeling started in her heart when she realized that Azreal must have had her belongings sold off. Only years of buying and selling and trading could have made it reach so far from home...

Before she could talk herself out of being too optimistic, she was on her feet and hurrying after the nobles on their horses. Her vision closed in on that box as the Prince shut it and slipped it back into the velvet satchel, too focused to realize that her animal companions had suddenly cleared off. "Hey... Hey!"

At least they listened, the horses' hooves clattering gently against the cobblestones. The Prince and the golden-haired nobleman beside him looked down at her, and the Prince's eyes – definitely blue – were wide and surprised all over again... though also quite confused.

She waited.

He waited.

Nemaelle wanted to reach out and pull the music box from his satchel, and she fought down the urge. "Uh..."

He laughed, bright and bold and loud enough to make even more people stop and stare at them, which only made her blush bright pink.

The nobleman beside him commented with a slightly cool kind of dryness, "You must not be from here; you don't afford Prince Michael the respects owed to him."

She curtsied low enough for her knees to nearly tap the stones, and hoped that was what he'd meant. She assumed the silence was a good thing, and she looked up at him, "Your Highness, I..."

"You...?" The golden-haired man's head began to tilt, and he let out a guttural little 'ooph!' when Prince Michael sent a sharp, velvet-clad elbow into his side.

"What the fuck, Raphael; she's just thanking me!" He went from moody snapping to wide smiling so fast, Nemaelle had to blink to adjust. "Don't listen to him. He's a dick."

And all the swearing...! Did the nobility of Heaven regularly swear? He was starting to seem more like a bandit in Prince's clothing. "I, uh..." She realized that there was no real way she could ask to see the box, to hold the box, to have the box...

Michael laughed all over again, both warm and abrasive. "You're welcome."

She still couldn't decide if being in his presence felt welcoming or embarrassing, laying out her awkwardness for everyone to see... She swallowed that awkwardness down and stood, adjusting the shoulder of her scarlet top as it tried to slip down her arm again. "Your Highness, I believe you have something that belongs to me."

Michael's red brows pinched together in even more surprise, even more confusion. "... You sure?"

Nemaelle couldn't be certain if his meager two words were meant to bug her, but that was exactly what they did. For the first time in years, she wished she could be recognized for the Princess she was... "You have a music box in your satchel. It's mine."

Raphael laughed, wearing his own bewilderment on his face. "It's _yours?_ "But his amusement fell flat when she glared at him, eyes sharp as cut rubies, the lashes framing them pale as frost.

"Yes. It's my box." She spoke plainly.

"I don't recall him buying it off you."

Her cheeks puffed out. "Whoever you bought it from had no right selling it to you in the first place!"

"You calling my merchants liars?" Michael didn't seem to take too kindly to people scrutinizing his merchants.

"No..." She didn't want to get those merchants in trouble. They were only doing their work; it wasn't their fault they'd come into possession of a box Azreal had sold off...

"Then how's the box yours? No offense, but I'm pretty fucking sure a beggar girl couldn't afford it." He became too warm, unpleastantly warm, like how a door might feel if a fire raged on the other side of it.

But somehow... Somehow, that only pushed her. Nemaelle reached out to grab his hand, forcefully slapping the three gold coins into his palm.

Her actions spurred another laugh from Raphael, and Michael joined him. "I didn't pay three gold pieces for the box. What the fuck do you think it's made out of? Wood and glass?"

"Then how much did you pay for it?"

"Why? You want to buy it off me?"

Nemaelle didn't have any more money on her... "Yes."

He tugged his hand away from hers, and the gold coins fell to the ground; he cared so little for them. Instead he forcefully took her snowy-pale chin in his hand and leaned over to grumble at her, "The box isn't for sale. Guess you're shit out of luck." He pushed her away by her chin, and she could have sworn that his blue eyes were definitely more like green.

The noblemen began to move off at the same careless, easy gait, taking the music box with them... and she tried to let it go. She truly did. But so many nights of depending on that box, with its song, weighed down on her and nearly made her weep. After everything she had lost, she had to be teased with nostalgia, too...?

"What the fuck...!"

Nemaelle hadn't given any thought to what chasing after the Prince and cutting the velvet satchel free with her sword would result in. But there it dangled from her hand... What else could she do but run?

The clatter of horses' hooves against the cobblestones rang in her ears and made her feel as though they must have only been inches away from her. She threw herself into the thickest of crowds, screaming out, "Excuse me! Sorry! Excuse me!" The horses whinnied, and she quickly glanced behind her to see them rearing up, Raphael wide-eyed, and Prince Michael fuming bright red in his face.

"My Lord, we must get the guards! They can chase after her!" Raphael offered, but Michael continued shooing the people aside and urging his horse forward.

"You think there's time for that? Really, Raphael?"

"She's armed, Michael!"

"Here, hold this."

Raphael only just realized that Michael had stuffed his regal horse's reins into his hand when the Prince suddenly dismounted. "My Lord, stop! You can't-"

But Michael was already gone, hollering through the crowd and making them scatter.

"... do... this."

Michael couldn't hear his friend sighing in hopelessness; the shock and the rage pounded too loudly in his ears for it. At least the pretty brat was easy to spot, white hair glowing under the spring sun, all in red and blue and yellow. She was one glaring beacon of a thief, that's for sure...! "Was three gold pieces not enough?" She didn't answer, but picked up her skirt with one hand and began to run faster. She certainly wasn't modest, balling the skirt up in her hand high enough to expose her legs nearly to the knee. Where the Hell was her petticoat? "If you give up now, I won't have your hands cut off!"

The wind carried an ugly snort of a scoff in his direction. "That your idea of placating me?" She suddenly leapt to the side, into a narrow alley.

"It's called mercy, but maybe you don't deserve it!" Wedging through the paupers taking up space in the alley was quite the chore, but somehow she managed it, and he along with her. "Dead end, beggar girl!"

But Nemaelle jumped and climbed up the shaking mass of half-rotted wooden crates and moth-eaten bolts of cloth, the gray toes of her boots only lightly tapping against the wobbling fence before she made it onto a roof. "Is it?" She took a moment to catch her breath, looking down at him as he sent her an acid-green glare... she couldn't help it. She returned the salute he'd first given her, that imaginary tipping of the hat. "Good day, Your Highness." And then she took off across the rooftops, running for the nearest edge of the city.

That obnoxious little...! He scrambled after her, though the crates buckled in on him, and the fence broke just as he made his jump for the roof. By the time he had managed to claw his way up, he was smudged in dirt and dust, swearing out loud. He brushed some of the dust away before taking off after her.

Nemaelle had made it across three buildings before looking behind her and seeing that he had followed her. He actually climbed up onto the rooftops? She hadn't counted on that. Why should she? She wouldn't have wanted to dirty up that lush, shining jacket of his, if she were wearing it. She let out a choked up scream when her boot caught on the bottom hem of her skirt just as she was leaping to the next roof, tearing the fabric. She barely caught the next ledge, and groaned to pull herself up quickly.

She gasped and nearly fell backwards when the Prince leapt right over her before she could stand, but instead of letting her fall, he caught her by her pale hand. He didn't help her right herself, content to keep her leaning dangerously backward, only the toes of her boots barely secured to the roof. "Give me the bag."

"No." She breathed to him.

That wasn't what he wanted to hear, and it showed in the way his eyebrows arched high before pinching together in anger. His face was more expressive than she'd have figured a proper Prince would have. "If don't give me the damn bag, I will fucking _drop_ your pale ass!"

"Drop me, then!" She snapped.

The nerve of the woman...! They remained that way, her red eyes clashing against his, him trying to find the words to say. "... I'll do it!"

"So do it!"

"You'll break your damn legs!"

"Well I'm not giving you the box, so...!"

He blinked in confusion. "... What the fuck is _wrong_ with you? You're insane!"

Despite being at the mercy of his hold, she bantered back, "You're a real charmer, huh?"

"Shut the fuck up!" He grumbled... and then released her. And then immediately caught her again.

Nemaelle went from wide-eyed and screaming to glaring and raging. "Oh my God! Are you going to drop me or not?"

He should do it. He told himself over and over that he should do it... "Dammit!" He tugged her upright, and then quickly grappled her around her middle. "Give me the God damn bag, beggar girl!"

"No!" She let out a grunt of force when she managed to throw him right over her shoulders, and she ran again.

Dammit, he _knew_ he should have dropped her! "Get the fuck back here!" He roared and sprinted. The chase was absolutely ridiculous, hopping from rooftop to rooftop, scrambling up windowsills to continue across taller buildings. Were they going keep running all _day?_ She had to tire out at some point!

The chase only paused when they were slipping and clawing across the steeper inclines and declines of a church roof, and he almost grabbed hold of her hair before she dived straight across the modest little bell tower. They stood on either side of it, breathing heavily... He chased her around one side, but she merely ran to the opposing side, even when he speedily changed directions back and forth. "Don't you think... this is fucking stupid?" Michael panted to her.

"Extremely." She sighed back.

"I have... men coming. Many men. They'll hunt you down."

Nemaelle shrugged. "Let them. Nothing I... haven't been through, before."

Michael wasn't sure whether he hated or admired her stubbornness. "Look... I understand."

A sudden smile flashed across her face, but her words were bitter. "Yeah? You do?"

"I mean..." He wondered which words would get through to her. Admittedly, words were never his strong suit. His father often said his long-gone older brother had a gift with them. He supposed that meant his own speech would always be too brash in comparison... but dammit, he gave it his best shot. "It's clear you're... desperate, if you're gonna do this. Times must be very hard for you-"

She laughed, loud and mocking and mean.

"Do you fucking mind? I'm trying to sympathize!"

"Good luck!" She knew he'd need it. Nothing he could fathom would even scratch the surface of her level of 'hard times.'

"The bag isn't fucking worth it, all right?" Michael yelled. "Just give me the damn bag. I'll call off the men. We can forget this happened. If I spot you in the streets again, I'll give you ten gold pieces. Whatever helps you stay off the streets for a few days. I don't want any of you stuck out there any more than you want to be."

Oh, she hated that he was actually serious, that he seemed genuine in wanting to strike such a deal with her. "... And I give you the bag?"

He nodded and held out his hand. "That's all I want."

Nemaelle gave him a thoughtful frown... but ultimately reached back into her tied up bundle to fish out the velvet satchel.

Michael gave her a relieved sigh and a laughing smile. "You're fucking nuts. But this was actually kinda fun."

She laughed. "Good exercise, right?"

"Yeah." He caught the velvet satchel, only to find it wiggling in his hands. "What the f-" A gray squirrel suddenly popped out and skittered up his face before leaping off.

Aside from the squirrel, the satchel was empty, and Nemaelle was already two roofs away from him.

She saw him fuming and heard his rapid-fire swearing, and she couldn't help but smile and laugh over her shoulder at him. "Enjoy your bag!" But for all the strange joy she felt warming her up from within, she knew it was over. Her time in Heaven was finished...

But she had her box. She never thought she'd see it again, or hear the song it played. Such a strange little comfort, but it meant everything to her. It was worth the trouble.

Now she just needed a way to escape. She had no doubt the angry Prince would send others after her, and they would likely be on horseback. She would never outrun them, and she couldn't stay on the rooftops forever...

"Get back here, you white-haired bitch!"

His voice came from closer to her than she anticipated, and it made her jump and run all the faster. One glance back confirmed that he was only one building away from her. He was better at racing across the rooftops than she thought a pampered Prince would be! And to make it all worse, she could hear far too many horses also approaching. Oh, would she really be able to escape...?

The next roof she landed on was thinner, older, made of rickety wood, mostly... with a hole, several panels stripped away as though waiting to be replaced with new ones. It was a gamble…

She jumped in, anyway. Sheer luck was on her side; she landed in giant bales of hay and rolled to the ground, a bit bruised but otherwise unharmed. The barn was tiny and held only one horse, a dappled gray mare that looked either tired or bored. "Hey...! Hey..." She clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth, reaching out to the mare and trying not to be too edgy when she heard Michael's feet land hard on the barn roof.

The Prince looked down into the hole just in time to see Nemaelle climbing onto the horse with no saddle, no reins, nothing. "Are you fucking _kidding me?_ " He hissed down at her.

She only looked up to give him a smile, her yellow skirt bunched up around her thighs, straddling the mare. She didn't even tap her heels against the horse's sides. She merely gripped onto the gray and white mane, leaned down and whispered into its ear, and it took off...! The damn thing galloped off!

In frustration unlike any he'd known before, he kicked at the wooden shingles of the roof and let out a roar of a scream. He should have dropped her off that damn building when he had the chance! Served him right for getting weak while looking at her pretty little face... but he'd learned his lesson! Michael turned toward the sound of rapidly approaching hooves against the ground, and saw Raphael at the head of a small band of guards, Kamael riding his pale-golden horse. "Get off my God damn horse!"

Kamael was silent, but obedient, and skilled almost beyond compare, leaping off the horse with ease.

Raphael did a triple take as one moment, Kamael was beside him, the next not, and the following moment Michael landed right in the saddle. "You're going to end up hurting yourself, doing that!"

Michael only scoffed, glaring straight ahead at the small visage of Nemaelle on her impromptu steed.

Still, Raphael reasoned with him, jumping when he felt Kamael run and leap onto his own horse, causing it to whinny. "You should leave this to us, Michael. Kamael can subdue her easily, and she can't run forever."

"Kamael, shut him up." The Prince took hold of the reins and kicked his heels against his steed's sides. "Hyah!"

"Mich-" Raphael accidentally tugged too hard on his reins and caused his horse to rear up, grumbling from behind the thick hand suddenly covering his mouth. He sent his elbow back into Kamael's side, and he dropped his hand with only the smallest of winces. "Get off of my horse if you're going to do that to me!"

But the minor commotion was enough for Michael to speed ahead on his trusty, shining stallion, pushing ever faster toward the escaping thief. He saw her making her way for the treeline, the finger of forest stretching toward them from the east. "If you think you can hide from me, you're gonna be disappointed, beggar girl!"

The woman looked over her shoulder, but continued hurrying across the grassy field.

"Yeah, keep going!" He continued goading her, "Go run into the forest like the fucking animal you are! I will hunt you down!" He saw her plant one gray boot upon the mare's back, and then another. Was she fucking serious...?

She sprung off the horse's back and disappeared into the treetops.

"... Shit! Fucking _shit!_ " Michael swore and swore, light playing off his steed's coat as it reared up, as though sharing his discontent.

"My Lord!" Raphael's horse skidded and left arcs of dirt carved into the ground as he quickly moved to stand before the Prince.

Michael held up his hand, and heard the band of guards clamor to a halt behind him.

"Please. Let us handle this ourselves."

"She made a fucking fool of me!"

"She could have killed you, Michael! She could have cut you open when she took your satchel!"

"Yeah, well she _didn't!_ " Michael's horse fidgeted and stamped about nervously. "Move."

Raphael's light blue eyes blinked in bewilderment. "You're gambling with your life, doing this...!"

The Prince's hand tore through his red hair before wildly slashing through the air in a command to stand aside. "Raphael, if you don't move I will fucking run you over!"

Despite being the closest of friends, Raphael wanted to scream whenever he got reckless. A firm frown curled his lips. "No!"

Michael was true to his word, suddenly charging at him.

"Michael, please! Be reasonable!" But he drew ever closer, and when he saw him plant his dark boots on his horse's saddle, Raphael's eyes began to grow wide and round. "Michael, what-" Suddenly Kamael grabbed onto his reins from behind him and gave a sharp tug, urging the horse out of the warpath just in time for Michael to speed past them and jump into the trees.

"He will be back." Kamael's voice, while rarely used, was deep and rumbling as he climbed off Raphael's horse to take hold of Michael's, who had grown confused at the lack of a rider.

But Raphael was utterly exasperated, slumping forward in his horse to moan aloud, " _Why_ is he like this? Why?"

"We should tell the King."

"No! No, are you crazy?" He sat straight up at the very notion. "King YHWH's _already_ on his death bed! This would just send him off even sooner!"

Kamael climbed up onto Michael's horse before asking, "Then what shall we do...?"

Raphael pressed a stressed hand to his forehead. "I don't know, I don't _know_... If he's not back by nightfall, we'll send out a search party. I guess he can have his last hoorah, for now..."


End file.
